SEA07LA060 · Brown Pitts S-1
Brown Pitts S-1 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Carson Airport (CXP) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07LA060
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Brown Pitts S-1
- Aircraft type
- Brown PITTS S-1
- 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
- N20164
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carson Airport (CXP), Carson City, NVTo not recorded
- 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 · descent
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The experimental bi-plane collided with the frozen surface of a lake in daytime visual flight rules conditions during a local area flight. The pilot built, maintained, and raced the airplane, in which he had accrued over 700 hours. The commercial air carrier pilot reported 30,000 hours on his last airman medical application. An examination of the wreckage revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation prior to impact. Located within the pilot's flight suit was a broken beer bottle. The pilot's post-mortem chest blood ethanol level was 0.155 percent, and post-mortem urine ethanol level was 0.279 percent. These levels suggest recent ingestion of substantial amounts of alcohol, amounts which would render a non-tolerant individual unconscious or nearly so. The FAA was aware of the pilot's driver's license suspension 10 months prior to the accident, but had not obtained details of the arrest. The arrest record for that suspension detailed that this pilot had been driving a vehicle at a blood alcohol level of more than 0.250. Had the FAA obtained this arrest record, they would have been aware that the pilot met the FAA's definition for substance dependence due to increased tolerance, and he likely would not have been issued a medical certificate without having undergone thorough evaluation and treatment.
Probable cause
The airplane collided with a frozen lake for undetermined reasons. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's intentional operation of the airplane while impaired by alcohol and the FAA's failure to obtain additional information about the pilot's self-reported driver's license suspension.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07LA060
- Event ID
- 20070214X00186
- Case number
- SEA07LA060
- 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: 0fd51c8a0ef6390d8dd276478bd78ad28143e5c9518c21a226dde09d65a372f3; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:52:07.975Z.