SEA98LA130 · Person VARI EZE
Person VARI EZE · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From AWO to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA130
- 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
Person VARI EZE
- Aircraft type
- Person VARI EZE
- 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
- N29NS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From AWOTo 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
- Approach
- 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)
- 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
- Carburetor heat control › Inadequate
- Landing gear › Overload
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot took of and was approximately one mile north of the airport inbound, when he experienced a total and abrupt loss of power. He reported that the 'carb heat was on prior to departure, and left on for (the) duration of (the) flight' and that he encountered 'mist' in flight. He further reported that the 'mist was unusual, as it was 'coating' the airframe and canopy in a manner not seen before.' Following the loss of power, he then executed a forced landing into an open, soft field. During the landing roll the main landing gear collapsed and the right wing and canard separated from the aircraft. The temperature and dew point were 63 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit respectively, and carburetor icing conditions existed. No mechanical malfunction with the engine was found following the accident, nor was any water found within the carburetor bowl. Fuel was present in the aircraft's fuel tanks and a successful post crash test run of the engine revealed no malfunctions.
Probable cause
A lack of adequate carburetor heat available and overload of the main landing gear. Contributing factors were carburetor icing conditions and soft terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA130
- Event ID
- 20001211X10711
- Case number
- SEA98LA130
- 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: 50bf4197f033bc673360de8e5eb0ebc7c7a5f6c1f80adc8600f3ee09fc192b3e; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:31:33.825Z.