SEA02FA097 · Lewis Nieuport 11
Lewis Nieuport 11 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) while maneuvering
From Independence State Airport (7S5) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02FA097
- 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
Lewis Nieuport 11
- Aircraft type
- Lewis NIEUPORT 11
- 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
- N132DC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Independence State Airport (7S5), Independence, ORTo not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Ignition system, distributor › Loose part/bolt/nut/clamp/etc
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, adjustment, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 20 minutes into the experimental aircraft's first flight after the completion of its construction, the Volkswagen 1835 engine slowly began to lose power. Immediately after the pilot discovered he had a problem with the engine, he turned toward the approach end of the field he had departed from in hopes of making a precautionary landing if necessary. As he headed back toward the airport, the aircraft continued to lose power, and it became apparent that he would not be able to stretch the glide far enough to land on the paved runway. Because the terrain between him and the runway was not suitable for landing and was crossed by power lines, and because the berm that ran along the side of the runway made it unsafe to land perpendicular to the runway, the pilot decided he would try to land parallel to the runway in a mowed grass area adjacent to it. Although he was able to stretch the glide to an extent that allowed him to reach the airport boundary, the aircraft had lost so much altitude that when he attempted to make the turn to parallel the runway, the aircraft's right wing tip impacted the terrain. A post-accident inspection of the engine determined that the distributor position locking clamp bolt had not been retightened after a pre-installation engine test run. The lose distributor then slowly rotated while the aircraft was airborne, resulting in a slow but steady loss of power.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power in maneuvering flight due to the rotation of the ignition distributor as a result of a failure to tighten the distributor positioning clamp after the last engine timing adjustment. Factors include an inadequate maintenance activity, no suitable landing terrain below the location where the loss of power occurred, and power lines along the emergency descent flight path.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02FA097
- Event ID
- 20020614X00891
- Case number
- SEA02FA097
- 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: 5796b1b9e51daed7c1ed85d0bd66bcec881a7cd9de3a3748ccaf84dd396ef48d; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:51:35.435Z.