SEA06CA051 · Ercoupe 415-C
Ercoupe 415-C · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO) to Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA06CA051
- 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
Ercoupe 415-C
- Aircraft type
- Ercoupe 415
- 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
- N93788
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO), Arlington, WATo Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE), Everett, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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 › Descent, excessive
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, earlier in the afternoon, he flew the airplane from one airport to another, and he and his passenger had lunch at the destination airport. The pilot reported that he experienced "some difficulty restarting the plane" for the return trip. After "several tries," he was able to restart the engine. The pilot stated that he did not recall checking the engine oil pressure after restarting the engine. After takeoff on runway 34, the pilot "noticed that the oil pressure indicated 0." He reduced power and maneuvered the airplane for an emergency landing on runway 11. During the turn to final, the airplane "lost altitude," and the pilot attempted to stop the descent by adding power, but the left wing struck the ground. According to the pilot, about 6 months before the accident, "there were several incidents where the oil pressure failed to come up after a stop for lunch. After mechanics replace[d] the oil pressure relief valve, this had not been a problem." The reason for the loss of oil pressure on the accident flight was not determined.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive descent rate and his delay in taking action to reduce the descent rate which resulted in an in-flight collision with the runway during an emergency landing. Contributing factors were the total loss of engine oil pressure and the pilot's failure to check the oil pressure gage after engine start which would have resulted in detection of the oil pressure problem prior to takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA06CA051
- Event ID
- 20060313X00291
- Case number
- SEA06CA051
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2006-02-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 874780c1bf4967fe856c4a58b1a60cc77be65eec97885bdb7d2a2eb659a09a32; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:06:53.493Z.