NYC05LA012 · Douglas Adventure Air AMPIB
Douglas Adventure Air AMPIB · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From North Central State Airport (SFZ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC05LA012
- 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
- 1 · 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
Douglas Adventure Air AMPIB
- Aircraft type
- Douglas ADVENTURE AIR AMPIB
- 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
- N469PD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Central State Airport (SFZ), Pawtucket, RITo 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
- Approach · VFR pattern turn to base
- 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 control in flight
- 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/spin
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
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 had completed construction of the accident airplane, and an FAA inspector had approved it for flight and issued a special airworthiness certificate. On the day of the accident, which was the second flight conducted since the construction was completed, witnesses observed the airplane in the airport traffic pattern. As the airplane turned onto the base leg, about 500 feet above the ground, it suddenly "nosed over," and spiraled towards the ground. The witnesses also recalled that the engine "sputtered" just prior to it descending. An additional witness recalled that the engine was "revving at full power" as it descended. The airplane came to rest about 1 mile from the airport, where a post-crash fire consumed the wreckage. According to a statement posted by the accident owner/pilot on a website message board dedicated to Adventurer experimental amphibian airplanes, the pilot stated that he had modified the elevator of the airplane from a 3 degree maximum up angle, to a 18 degree maximum up angle for the accident flight, "to see if I have leveled out the wings, and if I can get sufficient elevator up travel to climb out of the airport at 90mph." Examination of the wreckage revealed that the airplane's automotive type engine was extensively damaged by the post-crash fire, and further examination could not be performed. Also noted were several socks filled with steel ball bearings, weighing approximately 25 pounds, and 1 or 2-50-pound bags of ballast in the wreckage. The exact location of where the socks and ballast were stationed during the flight could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control, which resulted in an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC05LA012
- Event ID
- 20041110X01800
- Case number
- NYC05LA012
- 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: 90e127b789aeb5c1cc9bbb19ec917439d47fc382cdddb271710f8a4e3e6a5150; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:14:44.541Z.