NYC05LA089 · Swearingen SA-226T
Swearingen SA-226T · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK) to Teterboro Airport (TEB)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC05LA089
- 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
Swearingen SA-226T
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA-226
- 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
- N22DW
- Operator
- Dominick Alfieri
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK), Nantucket, MATo Teterboro Airport (TEB), Teterboro, NJ
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- 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 › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During takeoff from the departure airport, as the pilot advanced the throttles, the aircraft made a "sudden turn to the right." The pilot successfully aborted the takeoff, performed an engine run-up, and then took off without incident. The pilot experienced no anomalies during the second takeoff or the flight to the destination airport. As he reduced the power while in the traffic pattern, at the destination airport, the left engine accelerated to 60 percent power. The pilot reported to the tower that he had "one engine surging and another engine that seems like I lost control or speed." The pilot advanced and retarded the throttles and the engines responded appropriately, so he continued the approach. As the pilot flared the airplane for landing, the left engine surged to 65 percent power with the throttle lever in the "idle" position. The airplane immediately turned to the right; the right wing dropped and impacted the ground. Disassembly of the engines revealed no anomalies to account for surging, or for an uncommanded increase in power or lack of throttle response. Functional testing of the fuel control units and fuel pumps revealed the flight idle fuel flow rate was 237 and 312 pounds per hour (pph), for the left and right engines, respectively. These figures were higher than the new production specification of 214 pph. According to the manufacturer, flight idle fuel flow impacts thrust produced when the power levers are set to the flight idle position and differences in fuel flow can result in an asymmetrical thrust condition.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to depart with a known deficiency, which resulted in a loss of control during landing at the destination airport. A factor was the fuel control units' improper flight idle fuel flow rate.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC05LA089
- Event ID
- 20050616X00782
- Case number
- NYC05LA089
- 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: ca9bdf02ec934e3a65083ae5fd9cc4dc81aaba51beade439e59192bca3d62a08; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:07:09.265Z.