LAX07LA233 · Dehavilland DHC-1B
Dehavilland DHC-1B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Olympia Regional Airport (KOLM) to Arlington Municipal Airport (KAWO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA233
- 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
Dehavilland DHC-1B
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-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
- NX2EA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Olympia Regional Airport (KOLM), Olympia, WATo Arlington Municipal Airport (KAWO), Arlington, WA
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 contamination; Wire, transmission
- 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 › Contamination, water
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, 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 experimental airplane's engine lost power a few minutes after takeoff. There was no surge or popping sound associated with the sudden loss of power. The pilot selected the second fuel tank, completed engine out emergency procedures, but was unable to restart the engine, and selected a two lane road for landing. During the landing the airplane snagged multiple power lines and came to rest partially suspended from the broken power lines. The airplane's fuel system had been modified from the firewall forward, with a canister type of fuel filter and an Ellison throttle body. Removal and examination of the fuel filter disclosed brown, rust-colored corrosion. Sludge was inside the filter canister, and rust-colored stains were on the filter element. Examination of the fuel tanks revealed rust-colored deposits around the fuel tank outlets. The rust-colored deposits and stains are consistent with water contamination in the fuel filter canister and fuel tank, and indicates that the fuel system had been exposed to water for some time. The engine maintenance logbook recorded that an annual examination was completed on July 1, 2007, and that "all fuel and oil screens/filters checked," which was not consistent with the physical condition of the fuel filter as examined after the accident.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to water-contaminated fuel, and maintenance personnel's inadequate inspection of the fuel system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA233
- Event ID
- 20070806X01115
- Case number
- LAX07LA233
- 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: c413a7e369811356a1861c82c1cb6a62bb85429ddd41e8faba271f108ddc0f26; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:26:03.730Z.