CHI07LA062 · Hallburg Amphibian S21D
Hallburg Amphibian S21D · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From North Platte Regional Airport Lee Bird Field (LBF) to Iowa City Municipal Airport (IOW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07LA062
- 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
- 2 · 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
Hallburg Amphibian S21D
- Aircraft type
- Hallburg AMPHIBIAN S21D
- 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
- N41RH
- Operator
- James Reynolds
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Platte Regional Airport Lee Bird Field (LBF), North Platte, NETo Iowa City Municipal Airport (IOW), Iowa City, IA
- 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
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was recently purchased and was being ferried to the new owner when it impacted terrain. A witness reported seeing the airplane flying at a low altitude when the engine lost power. The airplane impacted a snow-covered agricultural field and sustained damage to the airplane structure leaving a debris field approximately 200 feet in length. Examination of the airplane revealed no usable fuel aboard the airplane. A tailwind prevailed at the time of the accident and the direction of the forced landing was perpendicular to the airplane's flight path. The engine driven fuel pump was tested within test specifications. The examination of the airframe and engine revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The inadequate preflight planning/preparation by the pilot in command and the fuel exhaustion during cruise flight. An additional cause was the inadequate forced landing procedure. A contributing factor was the tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07LA062
- Event ID
- 20070208X00158
- Case number
- CHI07LA062
- 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: 9641e6ac18b72536a3ec8eede63eec80ea3189f5db2fc0dcc91d63c6b3e55c92; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:52:52.866Z.