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SEA98LA054 · Snow 600-S2C

13 Mar 1998 · BICKLETON, WA, United States

Snow 600-S2C · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) while maneuvering

From DONOHO ROAD, WA to UNKNOWN

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Event

NTSB case
SEA98LA054
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

Snow 600-S2C

Aircraft type
Snow 600
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
N1640S
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From DONOHO ROAD, WATo UNKNOWN
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 137: Agricultural
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
Maneuvering · aerial application
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
Total 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 exhaustion
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

  • Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
  • Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot took off 50 minutes to 1 hour before the accident, and was spraying a field at the time of the accident. He reported that on the last pass, as he was pulling up, the engine lost power in a left turn. He performed a forced landing onto rough and uneven terrain; and the aircraft was substantially damaged. The aircraft salvage crew who recovered the aircraft reported that they found 3 gallons of fuel in the aircraft's left wing tank and no fuel in the right wing tank (the aircraft has a 33-gallon tank in each wing, of which 6.5 gallons in each tank is unusable.)

Probable cause

The pilot's mismanagement of the fuel which led to fuel exhaustion. A related factor was unsuitable terrain.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record SEA98LA054
Event ID
20001211X09786
Case number
SEA98LA054
Dataset
historical-pre2008
Source SHA-256
89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
  • 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: 53067cfe60efd85095aa7c5674e4c0c8e832689a224b64c8c59d665e717ffe5c; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:58:48.992Z.
  • Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states "the aircraft was substantially damaged" in the forced landing onto rough and uneven terrain, not destroyed.