IAD05LA024 · Hare Seawind
Hare Seawind · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Princeton Airport (39N) to 39N
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05LA024
- 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
Hare Seawind
- Aircraft type
- Hare 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
- N42HA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Princeton Airport (39N), Princeton, NJTo 39N
- 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 · descent
- 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 starvation; Stall
- 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
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated flight instructor was conducting a flight review with the commercial pilot owner in an amateur built amphibious airplane powered by an Allison 250 turboprop engine. The engine began to surge. After discussion with the flight instructor, the pilot decided to return to an airport. During the descent the engine continued to surge and eventually lost all power. About 15 feet above the grass, off of the approach end of a runway, the airplane "stalled" and experienced a hard landing. The fuel system of the airplane was composed of two main tanks each capable of holding 30 gallons which simultaneously provided fuel to the engine, two auxiliary tanks each capable of holding 30 gallons and two wingtip tanks each capable of holding 25 gallons, for a total capacity of 170 gallons of fuel. A fuel transfer valve, flow meter and fuel quantity indicator were also installed. However, the fuel quantity indicator could only show the quantity of the two left and right, main tanks, and the fuel totalizer function of the flow meter was inoperative. Following the accident it was revealed that the fuel transfer valve was in the "open" position and that about 1 gallon of fuel was present in the left main tank, approximately 11 gallons in the right main tank and 14 gallons in the right auxiliary tank. Both wingtip fuel tanks and the left auxiliary fuel tank were absent of fuel. Fuel samples taken from the airplane for examination were bright, clear, and no visible contamination or water could be observed. A check of both samples was performed using water-finding paste, and no color change was observed. A detailed examination and test cell run of the engine was conducted which did not reveal evidence of any pre-impact failures and all engine response times were within limits during the test run. During interviews, the flight instructor stated that he had been told that their was about 1 to 1.5 hours of fuel on board, and that they had been airborne only about 25 minutes when the engine lost power.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management which resulted in fuel starvation and subsequent loss of engine power. A contributing factor to the accident was the pilot's inadvertent loss of airspeed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05LA024
- Event ID
- 20041214X01982
- Case number
- IAD05LA024
- 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: 2b99121009d937b4d15fe611d7baf82d07a70c08ccf8d57d0e3b8a14ba63181b; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:06:04.250Z.