SEA01LA080 · Ayres S2R-T45
Royal Flying Service Ayres S2R-T45 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From WA8 · Royal City, WA to Royal City, WA
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA080
- 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
Ayres S2R-T45
- Aircraft type
- Ayres S2
- 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
- N6129D
- Operator
- Royal Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From WA8 · Royal City, WATo Royal City, 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that shortly after takeoff, he leveled the aircraft about 150 to 200 feet AGL and adjusted the power for cruise. The pilot noted that the fuel lever did not appear to be in its usual position, and he applied pressure to the lever to confirm that it was against the stop. Shortly after application of this pressure, the engine quit. Due to the low altitude, the pilot did not attempt a restart. The pilot initiated a forced landing to an open field. During the landing roll, the airplane collided with a mound of downed trees and nosed over. During the airframe and engine inspection, no mechanical failures or malfunctions were noted. The fuel control unit was removed and tested. The FCU performance was nominal and within field adjustment limits. The unit was held in a maximum fuel flow condition for a five minute period. No decay of fuel flow was observed. The fuel control reacted to speed, P3 air pressure and power lever test inputs.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. Trees were a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA080
- Event ID
- 20010501X00846
- Case number
- SEA01LA080
- 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: d778caa316485581c0bbe310e6dd70fbb893e2b5c6af88c4709002194bec9c0b; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:58:12.721Z.