SEA01LA057 · Cassutt II
Cassutt II · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Othello Municipal Airport (S70) to Pangborn Memorial Airport (EAT)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA057
- 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
Cassutt II
- Aircraft type
- Cassutt II
- 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
- N1431
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Othello Municipal Airport (S70), Othello, WATo Pangborn Memorial Airport (EAT), Wenatchee, 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
- Stall
- 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
- Engine assembly, other › Failure
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while en route, "the oil pressure dropped rapidly followed by decreasing engine RPM." He stated that he decided to land on a frontage road for an interstate highway. During his approach, he "noticed a lot of dark smoke coming from the starboard side of [the] engine just as I was starting to turn final." The pilot reported , "During base to final turn airspeed was allowed to decay causing excessive sink rate and not completing the turn on centerline for landing." He stated that "touchdown was made in soft sand with high vertical speed causing [the aircraft's] landing gear to fail and [the] nose of [the] aircraft to get in the dirt." An FAA inspector who examined the aircraft after the accident observed that a wrist pin plug in the engine had failed, producing metal that entered the engine oil system and restricted oil flow to the crankshaft. The connecting rod bearings were also found severely distressed. The airplane had not been operated for approximately 17 years before the pilot purchased it shortly before the accident. The engine log contained no indication that the engine manufacturer's recommended engine preservation procedures for storage had been followed during this time period. However, the aircraft received a condition inspection about one month before the accident and was signed off as being found in a condition for safe operation.
Probable cause
Failure of a wrist pin plug in the engine, resulting in partial blockage of the engine lubrication system and partial failure of the engine connecting rod bearings; and the pilot's subsequent failure to maintain adequate airspeed during a forced landing approach, resulting in a stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA057
- Event ID
- 20010308X00570
- Case number
- SEA01LA057
- 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 2001-03-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1ee000a880fbcfab329790c6fe166640632e05f663eb0684304a1a3ff7c68187; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:07:17.544Z.