SEA06LA040 · Holscher KR II
Holscher KR II · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Olympia Regional Airport (OLM) to Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA06LA040
- 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
Holscher KR II
- Aircraft type
- Holscher KR
- 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
- N395JT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Olympia Regional Airport (OLM), Olympia, WATo Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW), Tacoma Narrows, WA
- 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
- 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 exhaustion
- 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
- Engine instruments, fuel quantity gage › False indication
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 15 minutes after takeoff, during en route cruise, the aircraft's engine started to run rough and then completely stopped producing power. The pilot then established the aircraft in a descent at best glide speed, and tried to get the engine restarted. When he found that he could not get the engine to restart, the pilot, who at that time was over water, made a 180 degree turn in order to head toward the nearest landing area. He eventually touched down in a rough field, and although the initial touchdown was successful, as the aircraft traveled across the rough field, the nose gear collapsed, and the aircraft nosed over onto its back. A post-accident inspection revealed that the aircraft had run out of useable fuel. In addition, an inspection/test of the fuel system determined that both the electric fuel gauge and the backup fuel level sighting tube were severely miscalibrated, and both indicated the aircraft contained significantly more fuel than was actually present during the test. During the investigation, the pilot said that he had looked in the fuel tank prior to takeoff, but that he did not use a dip stick to confirm how much fuel was actually present. He further stated that based upon what the gauges indicated prior to takeoff, he thought he had enough fuel for more than two hours of flight.
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion while in cruise flight due to inaccurate fuel quantity indications. Factors included the pilot's failure to positively determine the quantity of fuel onboard the aircraft during preflight, and rough, uneven grassy terrain at the location where the pilot found it necessary to execute the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA06LA040
- Event ID
- 20060222X00216
- Case number
- SEA06LA040
- 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: 08ffc8e505569f363a54f516d79c1af9813d9402935a489e047af82c38fe4564; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:10:02.320Z.