NYC99LA179 · Allen-Charles BARRACUDA
Allen-Charles BARRACUDA · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Medina Municipal Airport (1G5) to Massena International Airport Richards Field (MSS)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA179
- 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
Allen-Charles BARRACUDA
- Aircraft type
- Allen Charles BARRACUDA
- 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
- N849JA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Medina Municipal Airport (1G5), Medina, OHTo Massena International Airport Richards Field (MSS), Massena, NY
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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 a cross country flight in a homebuilt airplane, when the airplane was about 60 to 90 nautical miles from it's destination, the pilot noticed the airplane's left and right fuel gages were both indicating 1/8 full. The pilot decided to land early at another airport. However, due to haze and the anxiety of the situation, the pilot was unable to find a suitable airport so he elected to make a precautionary landing on a grass field. During the landing, the airplane's landing gear separated and the airplane incurred spar damage. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any pre-landing malfunctions of the airframe or engine. The left fuel gage needle indicated 'E,' and the right fuel gage needle indicated about 1/8 full. When the airplane was placed on level ground, visual examination of the fuel tanks revealed that about 1/4 inch of fuel remained in the left fuel tank, and approximately 4 inches of fuel remained in the right fuel tank. The pilot reported 321.8 hours of total flight experience, of which, 18.3 hours were in the make and model of the accident airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning which resulted in a precautionary landing. A factor in this accident was the pilot's selection of unsuitable terrain for the precautionary landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA179
- Event ID
- 20001212X19346
- Case number
- NYC99LA179
- 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: ff28edebf28f168855c00b4227fdddb81d31c67692de7b6c248a1c0d6436f023; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:30:03.540Z.