SEA03FA015 · Caron Seawind
Caron Seawind · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE) to Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03FA015
- 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
- 2 · 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
Caron Seawind
- Aircraft type
- Caron SEAWIND
- 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
- N313FC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE), Everett, WATo Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE)
- 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 · climb to 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 1,570 hour pilot/builder, along with a 9,000 hour commercial pilot (who had 150 hours experience in the make/model), departed in the homebuilt Seawind 3000 amphibious aircraft on a test flight after a little more than 12 hours of test flying. After approximately 30 minutes witnesses observed the aircraft go from a climb into a descending spiral. One witness reported that he heard the engine quit while others described varying engine sounds characteristic of decaying or intermittent power. One witness observed the aircraft's wings rocking about the longitudinal axis and 3/4 through the third spiral the nose dropped. The aircraft impacted the ground in a near vertical attitude with minimal evidence of horizontal motion through the heavily wooded terrain of the crash site. A post-crash fire consumed most of the aircraft. On site examination found no evidence of mechanical malfunction with the aircraft's controls and an engine disassembly and examination revealed the same findings for the powerplant. Propeller slash marks along the side of one of the trees at the ground impact site suggested a minimum of 1000 RPM an instant before ground impact. The center of gravity was estimated to be within limits at the time of the accident and the stall speed of the aircraft was reported as 64 knots (clean).
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons and the failure of the flying pilot to maintain flying speed resulting in an inadvertent stall, loss of control and subsequent collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03FA015
- Event ID
- 20021204X05567
- Case number
- SEA03FA015
- 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: a3c5c630ae36aca62008995c2ec08532643e124e8d346fb6b238b61dc920dcc6; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:36:18.045Z.