SEA01LA031 · de Havilland DHC-2 Mk. I
de Havilland DHC-2 Mk. I · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE) to Renton Municipal Airport (RNT)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA031
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
de Havilland DHC-2 Mk. I
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-2
- 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
- N2502
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE), Everett, WATo Renton Municipal Airport (RNT), Renton, 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Fuel system, selector/valve › Malfunction
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while in cruise flight at 1,800 feet, operating on the approximately 1/3 full center tank (note: the front tank was full and the rear tank was nearly empty), the aircraft's engine shut down. The pilot switched to the front tank and after about 10 to 15 seconds, the engine restarted. The engine ran smoothly for 15 to 20 seconds, then shut down again, with the fuel pressure reading zero. The pilot attempted to use the hand-operated wobble pump to restore fuel pressure, but was not successful. The pilot then performed a forced landing on what appeared to him to be the only suitable landing area, a high school football/baseball field. The pilot stated that he skidded across the wet field and hit a 10- to 12-foot-high chain link fence straight on at about 30 to 35 MPH. An FAA inspector reported that in a post-accident examination, anomalies with the fuel selector valve's operation were noted, namely, that "The selector valve was found to be able to aspirate to an empty tank in two different ways." The first condition was that "Using the wobble pump to create a suction in the supply-side line, slight inward pressure on the center of the valve would unseat the valve and the prime would be instantly lost. It would be impossible to recover unless the valve was allowed to resume its' [sic] original position." Second, the inspector reported that "With this particular valve it was possible to create enough suction in the selected off position, or in between position, to unseat the valve and cause aspiration to occur." The inspector stated that the condition was repeatable (to a lesser degree) with a newly overhauled valve.
Probable cause
A malfunction of the aircraft's fuel selector valve and subsequent fuel starvation. Factors included a short emergency landing area, a wet landing surface, and a fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA031
- Event ID
- 20010105X00049
- Case number
- SEA01LA031
- 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, coordinates. 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: adcf86424498227a7ffe7cb6ae7fdcbbba7ad205c690cc074b55dbf1db5ab72c; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:16:05.440Z.