LAX98LA033 · Waco YMF-5
Waco YMF-5 · Accident: propeller failure/malfunction en route
From Seychelles International Airport (SEZ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA033
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Waco YMF-5
- Aircraft type
- Waco YMF-5
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N369DP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seychelles International Airport (SEZ)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Propeller failure/malfunction
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Propeller system/accessories › Separation
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the preflight inspection, he examined the propeller while pulling the engine through each cylinder and found no discrepancies. The aircraft was about 7 minutes into a 15-minute flight when he saw a 'spark or flash' at the 11 o'clock position on the nose, followed quickly by the complete separation of the propeller. He turned the aircraft back toward the airport but had insufficient altitude and landed in a hilly area of a canyon. A postcrash fire began and consumed the aircraft aft of the firewall. The aircraft was examined on site and following recovery of the wreckage. An unsuccessful search was made for the wooden propeller. The metal propeller hub remained attached to the engine crankshaft with fragments of the wood center section intertwined in the bolts. The wood remains were insufficient to determine either the model or serial number of the propeller, or the condition of the boltholes. Both the engine crankshaft splines and propeller hub splines were unremarkable. The remaining pieces of wood from the hub were submitted for laboratory evaluation. The examining laboratories reported that there was insufficient evidence available from the small fragments submitted to identify an initiating event in the propeller or the failure cause of the wood hub.
Probable cause
The failure and separation of the propeller for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA033
- Event ID
- 20001208X09200
- Case number
- LAX98LA033
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3a28e4423670b48221a22088b2e194072f698cd9c8ee6b73d4266147227503ae; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:45:21.551Z.