SEA07LA088 · Johnson Zodiac CH601
Johnson Zodiac CH601 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) while maneuvering
From Arlington Municipal Airport (KAWO) to Arlington Municipal Airport (KAWO)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07LA088
- 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
Johnson Zodiac CH601
- Aircraft type
- Johnson ZODIAC CH601
- 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
- N601J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arlington Municipal Airport (KAWO), Arlington, WATo Arlington Municipal Airport (KAWO)
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 › Carburetor heat, not used
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 was in the process of aligning the aircraft to enter the downwind for landing when he decided that there were too many aircraft in the pattern and that he would maneuver to the west of the field until the number of aircraft practicing landings was reduced. As he turned away from the airport, he reduced his power to about 1,850 to 1,950 rpm (about 1,500 rpm below normal cruise), and then began to loiter to the west of the traffic pattern. Soon thereafter the aircraft's engine quit, and the pilot began looking for a place to make a forced landing. During the landing sequence, the pilot had to maneuver over some power lines, and just after he did so, the aircraft touched down on some soft terrain and flipped over onto its back. The pilot did not apply carburetor heat when the engine lost power, and because he had not listened to the Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS), he was unaware that at the time of the power loss there was only a one degree difference between the temperature and the dew point. According to the DOT/FAA/CT-82/44 Carburetor Icing Probability Chart, the pilot was operating in ambient conditions where serious carburetor icing could be expected at both glide and cruise power.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to apply carburetor heat when the engine lost power while being operated at a reduced power setting. Factors include carburetor icing condition, the pilot's failure to acquire the temperature/dew point information, and soft terrain in the field where the aircraft touched down.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07LA088
- Event ID
- 20070409X00384
- Case number
- SEA07LA088
- 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 2007-04-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b171bdb460c12fc92e6968ad8a7164bbe46f3dcaa44923fafc4ba67d6b79afef; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:56:19.153Z.