FTW98LA162 · Carter LONG-EZ
Carter LONG-EZ · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Addison Airport (ADS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA162
- 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
Carter LONG-EZ
- Aircraft type
- Carter LONG-EZ
- 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
- N83LE
- Operator
- Donald L. Judy · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Addison Airport (ADS), Dallas, TXTo 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel contamination
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Proper touchdown point, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 40 minutes into the personal flight, the homebuilt airplane's engine began "cutting out and kicking back in." Although the wind was from the south at 10 to 15 knots, the pilot elected to land the airplane downwind to the north on a grass airstrip, due to a concern that landing into the wind could result in a collision with mobile homes at the south end of the strip in case of an overrun. The airplane touched down about two-thirds of the way down the 3,000 foot long strip, overran the north end of the strip, nosed over, and came to a stop in the inverted position. Examination by an FAA inspector revealed that the gascolator bowl was full of water, and water was found in fuel drained from the left fuel tank. The passenger reported that the airplane was washed before the flight. According to the owner of the airplane, at an earlier date, he left the airplane parked outside, it rained overnight, and he found considerable water in the fuel system the next day.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the tailwind and his ensuing failure to attain the proper touchdown point. Factors were the tailwind and the pilot's failure to adequately preflight the airplane which resulted in a partial loss of engine power due to water contamination of the fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA162
- Event ID
- 20001211X09680
- Case number
- FTW98LA162
- 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: 2107035c7a0f81e51d1a674bf9d666a74276c4454d83a2c633179a3094e4bc88; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:52:43.188Z.