SEA05LA099 · Horvath Pitts S-1C
Horvath Pitts S-1C · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Hobby Field (77S) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05LA099
- 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
Horvath Pitts S-1C
- Aircraft type
- Horvath PITTS S-1C
- 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
- N81PU
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hobby Field (77S), Creswell, 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
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor float › Restricted
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 approximately 15 minutes after takeoff, while in straight and level flight at 4,000 feet MSL, the engine began to run rough and eventually lost power. After experiencing the loss of engine power, the pilot initiated a landing to a nearby open field. During the landing roll out, the airplane encountered tall grass and nosed over resulting in substantial damage. The pilot reported that post accident examination of the airplane's engine revealed that the brass carburetor float travel (total drop travel) was approximately 3/16 of an inch, 5/16 of an inch less than specified for normal operations. The carburetor float level is a means of regulating the amount of total fuel delivered to the engine via the metering jet.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power as a result of a carburetor float drop restriction during cruise flight. Tall grass in the landing area was a factor in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05LA099
- Event ID
- 20050517X00626
- Case number
- SEA05LA099
- 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: 6da300beedc4d9ace82370a4f365a72e64d80787d51d130e3d10277ba8f9d970; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:56:23.228Z.