LAX04LA046 · Suminski Cozy Long Ez
Suminski Cozy Long Ez · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Hana Airport (PHHN) to Marin County Airport - Gnoss Field (KDVO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA046
- 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
Suminski Cozy Long Ez
- Aircraft type
- Suminski COZY LONG EZ
- 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
- N534S
- Operator
- William B. Swears · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hana Airport (PHHN), Honolulu, HITo Marin County Airport - Gnoss Field (KDVO), Novato, CA
- 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 (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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- 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 engine lost power during cruise over the ocean, and the pilot ditched the airplane. The airplane was at 12,000 feet mean sea level (msl) when the engine began to experience variations of 100 rpm. The variations smoothed when the pilot adjusted the mixture, and he initially thought the variations were due to carburetor icing. After a few minutes, the conditions worsened and he turned the airplane toward an island located approximately 175 nm away. The oil pressure decreased to about 40 psi. The pilot announced a "MAYDAY" call when he realized that the oil pressure was still decreasing. The pilot began a low-powered descent, and began pumping oil into the engine using a hand pump that he had installed prior to the flight. The oil pressure decreased to 5 to 10 psi. When the airplane was at 4,000 feet msl, about 90 nm northeast of Kahalui, the engine seized. The pilot then ditched the airplane in the ocean, and the U.S. Coast Guard rescued him several hours later. Part of the airframe and the engine washed ashore on a beach about 30 days after the accident. Inspection of the remaining parts of the engine disclosed no definitive evidence of what precipitated the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during cruise flight for an undetermined reason, which resulted in an emergency descent and ditching.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA046
- Event ID
- 20031122X01941
- Case number
- LAX04LA046
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-11-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c9b95f500ec68be2e808fe212661189bf2f1ebf0ed05f6bb8d72a56254817e50; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:20:45.877Z.