SEA04LA004 · Seabase (Avid) Magnum
Seabase (Avid) Magnum · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Glacier Park International Airport (FCA) to Eureka Airport (88M)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA004
- 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
Seabase (Avid) Magnum
- Aircraft type
- Seabase (avid) MAGNUM
- 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
- N1966G
- Operator
- Rick Lynn
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Glacier Park International Airport (FCA), Kalispell, MTTo Eureka Airport (88M), Eureka, MT
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
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 he had just picked up the aircraft at the completion of some maintenance work and was returning to his home base. Prior to departure, the pilot preflighted the aircraft, but did not pull the fuel caps to visually check fuel quantity, instead the pilot checked the caramel colored sight glass in the cockpit, which when the fuel tanks are full, the sight window looks the same as when empty. The pilot stated that he assumed that the aircraft had been fueled, however, it had not during its stay for maintenance. After departure, and while in cruise at 4,500 feet above sea level, the engine abruptly stopped operating. Upon determining that the automobile traffic on a nearby highway was too dense to risk a landing he selected a series of fields just east of the highway. Two fences sectioned the fields across the intended landing path, and the surface of the fields was soft and mushy. During the landing roll, the nose dug in, the nose landing gear collapsed and the aircraft nosed over. A Federal Aviation Administration Inspector examined the aircraft the day following the accident and found no gas within the fuel tanks or the fuel strainer.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately preflight the aircraft to verify the fuel quantity, resulting in fuel exhaustion and the loss of engine power during cruise flight. Contributing factors were the pilot's failure to refuel the aircraft and the soft terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA004
- Event ID
- 20031017X01770
- Case number
- SEA04LA004
- 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: b398fe2a4af47030df3bd5bf1593d6421716666f394d39d72840014ed7711740; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:22:23.790Z.