SEA99FA015 · Piper PA-23-150
Piper PA-23-150 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From ZBB · BOUNDARY BAY to Bellingham International Airport (BLI)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99FA015
- 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
Piper PA-23-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- CFJXG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From ZBB · BOUNDARY BAYTo Bellingham International Airport (BLI), Bellingham, WA
- 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 starvation
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While en route at 2,200 feet msl, the pilot noticed a gradual loss of power in the right engine. Soon thereafter, the right engine power settled back to about 1,400 rpm. While the pilot was trying to find out what was wrong with the engine, the aircraft's cabin door popped open. Instead of making a precautionary landing at one of the airports he passed en route, the pilot attempted to continue on to his ultimate destination. Because he was having trouble holding altitude with the door partially open and the right engine at 1,400 rpm, the pilot elected to shut down the right engine. After shutting down the engine, it became obvious to the pilot that he could not make it to the airport, so he elected to land in a nearby field. While attempting an intentional gear-up on the soft, wet terrain, the aircraft sustained substantial damage. The investigation revealed that the aircraft had not flown for nearly 13 years prior to the day of the accident, and that even after seeing a thick, gooey, white substance flow out of the right fuel sump drain, the pilot did not examine the fuel system further. The loss of power was ultimately determined to have resulted from the accumulation of solid contaminants in the carburetor finger screen, resulting in a substantial restriction of the fuel flow to the cylinders.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to attempt to reach his final destination after a partial loss of engine power, instead of making a precautionary landing at one of the airports he overflew along his route. Factors include an inadequate preflight, a fuel filter flow restriction leading to fuel starvation, the decision to land with the gear retracted, and soft, wet terrain at the location where the forced landing was attempted.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99FA015
- Event ID
- 20001211X11497
- Case number
- SEA99FA015
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-11-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 140397e2da47e17bd2b87fd9f14fb02ad1880e288cef86fae1727dd47dd9596f; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:18:56.817Z.