SEA04LA178 · Helio Aircraft Ltd H800
Helio Aircraft Ltd H800 · Accident during takeoff
From Fossil, OR to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA178
- 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
Helio Aircraft Ltd H800
- Aircraft type
- Helio H800
- 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
- N4033G
- Operator
- John Frank Schmidt III
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fossil, 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Flight control, gust lock › Not removed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Immediately after becoming airborne the pilot realized that he had failed to remove the exterior aileron wing locks. About 75 to 100 feet above ground level (AGL) the pilot reduced power and lowered the nose to maintain airspeed and a wings level attitude. About 75 feet AGL the left wing started to drop slowly and eventually impacted the ground at an approximate 30 to 35 degree left bank. A post crash examination of the accident site revealed the left and right aileron wing gust locks were located approximately 10 and 15 feet on the ground outboard of their respective wingtips.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to remove the aileron wing gust locks prior to flight, which resulted in a loss of control during the descent/emergency landing. A factor contributing to the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA178
- Event ID
- 20040909X01370
- Case number
- SEA04LA178
- 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: 332d4f1cc20e9462d8673df0f22cc93296f5897a7f995be725061e98fee7bfa2; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:13:28.440Z.