CHI99LA255 · Buss AVID FLYER MARK IV AVID FLYER
Buss AVID FLYER MARK IV AVID FLYER · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Northport Airport (38WI) to ELAND, WI (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA255
- 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
Buss AVID FLYER MARK IV AVID FLYER
- Aircraft type
- Buss AVID FLYER MARK
- 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
- N392SB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northport Airport (38WI)To ELAND, WI (private airstrip)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the initial climb, at an altitude of approximately 100 feet above ground level (agl), the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot stated that he lowered the nose and made a turn of approximately 45-degrees to the east. The pilot reported that he made a '...hard landing off the runway on [the] airport property that was a level field.' During an examination of the wreckage, no anomalies were found with the airframe or the control systems. The engine started-up and ran without any anomalous behavior. According to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) maintenance inspector's statement, the engine had experienced a cold seizure due to the engine not being properly warmed-up prior to the takeoff run. According to the pilot's written statement, he also attributed the loss of engine power to a cold seizure of the engine.
Probable cause
the inadequate preflight planning/preparation by the pilot. Factors to the accident were the powerplant seizing and the misjudged flare by the pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA255
- Event ID
- 20001212X19213
- Case number
- CHI99LA255
- 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: e32933680fec2763dd59a17142de7c228502ecc02ccfcd6fe3ea7770aae6353c; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:28:46.092Z.