SEA07LA040 · Tessier Avid Flyer
Tessier Avid Flyer · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Portland Hillsboro Airport (KHIO) to Chehalem Airpark (17S)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07LA040
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Tessier Avid Flyer
- Aircraft type
- Tessier AVID FLYER
- 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
- N93TT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland Hillsboro Airport (KHIO), Hillsboro, ORTo Chehalem Airpark (17S), Newberg, OR
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › Ice
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
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, who was flying to a location where he was going to meet family members for lunch, departed from an airport that was reporting clear skies, no precipitation, and nine miles visibility. About seven minutes after departure he encountered an area of solid undercast. The ambient conditions in the area made carburetor icing a strong possibility at both glide and cruise power, and soon after flying over the undercast the pilot experienced carburetor icing and his engine started to lose power. Although the aircraft's carburetor heat system was later found to be without anomaly, the pilot was unable to keep the engine running, and it eventually lost all power. He then was forced to descend through the thick layer of fog to attempt a forced landing in instrument meteorological conditions. During that attempted landing, the aircraft impacted the terrain, resulting in fatal injuries to the pilot.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during maneuvering flight due to carburetor icing, and inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions. Factors were the ambient weather conditions conducive to carburetor icing and fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07LA040
- Event ID
- 20070115X00051
- Case number
- SEA07LA040
- 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: f595071e72ed87ca9c6bdc13e2a02ec3addbb115cd8722e3a02f1b0e4c0fa907; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:55:57.880Z.