CHI00LA158 · Truthan SEAREY
Truthan SEAREY · Accident: loss of control on ground/water while taxiing
From an unrecorded airport to Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA158
- 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
Truthan SEAREY
- Aircraft type
- Truthan SEAREY
- 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
- N89PJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR), MI
- 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
- Taxi
- 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 control on ground/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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was taxiing his amphibian airplane north on the Thorn Apple River, near Grand Rapids, Michigan. The west bank of the river section he was taxiing up was bordered by gradually down-sloping bluffs. When the airplane got past the bluff- section of the river, it 'nosed into the water and the aircraft flipped, tail over-the-nose, coming to rest inverted.' After the airplane was recovered, the pilot noted damage to the step of the hull. The pilot thought the damage to be consistent with striking a submerged log. Examination of the airplane revealed the forward fiberglass hull, fore deck, and 'turtle' deck were cracked inward. No other anomalies were found. At the time of the accident, the winds reported at Kent County International Airport, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 11 miles west of the accident site, were 210 degrees at 16 knots gusting to 21 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control when the airplane encountered high winds. Factors which related to this accident were the high crosswind, the wind gusts, and the submerged object.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA158
- Event ID
- 20001212X21178
- Case number
- CHI00LA158
- 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: 9fa0f9fad1c271fa9987d960c85af2926fbfbac7eef0c8371ce11a845d46a5f3; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:49:12.428Z.