CHI07LA115 · Bird Seawind 3000
Bird Seawind 3000 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Malden Regional Airport (MAW) to Willmar Municipal Airport John L Rice Field (2006) (ILL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07LA115
- 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
Bird Seawind 3000
- Aircraft type
- Bird SEAWIND 3000
- 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
- N40SW
- Operator
- Gene E. Underland · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Malden Regional Airport (MAW), Malden, MOTo Willmar Municipal Airport John L Rice Field (2006) (ILL), Willmar, MN
- 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
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
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
Witnesses reported seeing and hearing the airplane prior to its impact with the terrain. Several of these witnesses reported hearing the engine "sputtering" or "popping." A post crash fire engulfed the airplane, consuming all but the forward four feet of the fuselage. Control system integrity could not be conclusively determined; however, no evidence of a pre-impact failure was found. The engine was able to be rotated but damage from the post crash fire precluded determination as to the reason for the presumed loss of engine power. The terrain where the accident occurred was rising with vegetation about 8 to 12 inches tall. The ground scars and aircraft damage indicate that the bulkhead located just aft of the nose landing gear dug in during the forced landing resulting in the airplane nosing over.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for an undetermined reason. Contributing to the accident was the unsuitable terrain that was encountered by the pilot during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07LA115
- Event ID
- 20070501X00495
- Case number
- CHI07LA115
- 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: 3c215ca35862838f39d6d45f6ebc38dc7500796e3890d1eb4ca59647d92b2fd2; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:42:18.236Z.