SEA07FA240 · Flight Design CTSW
Flight Design CTSW · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Salinas Municipal Airport (SNS) to St George Regional Airport (SGU)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07FA240
- 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
Flight Design CTSW
- Aircraft type
- Flight Design CTSW
- 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
- N775CT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salinas Municipal Airport (SNS), Salinas, CATo St George Regional Airport (SGU), St. George, UT
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Stall
- 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 pilot had just purchased the special light sport airplane and was flying it cross country to his home. He had received several hours of flight training and completed a flight review in the airplane the day before the accident. The accident flight was uneventful until about 20 miles from the destination, at which point the engine began to run rough. The pilot determined that the choke had "worked its way back about 3/4 of an inch." He "eased" the choke off and the engine roughness stopped. The engine lost complete power about 5 miles from the destination as the pilot entered the downwind leg for landing on runway 16. The pilot reported that he attempted to glide to the airport; however, the sink rate was excessive and he located a small clearing in the boulders on the bluff ahead and elected "to stall in vertically rather than to tumble over the rocks horizontally." He intentionally stalled the airplane at an altitude of 10 feet above ground. The airplane impacted the terrain, nosed over and came to rest inverted. The pilot added that he could have deployed the airplane's BRS parachute (a rocket deployed emergency parachute system), but "chose not to because we could have been blown over the dense population area, very near" to the accident site. Fuel was observed leaking from the wreckage the day after the accident. Initially during post-accident examination, the engine could not be rotated by hand. A broken snap ring was found jamming the gears in the propeller gearbox. According to the engine manufacturer's representative, it is common to find this snap ring broken in engines that have sustained impact damage. The snap ring was replaced and the engine was test run. The engine developed near 100 percent performance. The ignition system was checked and functioned normally. No discrepancies were noted that would have prevented normal engine operation and production of power. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during approach for an undetermined reason. Contributing to the accident was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07FA240
- Event ID
- 20070911X01373
- Case number
- SEA07FA240
- 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 2007-08-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: de9630e734083a42486ebbaaca8a29063325b2c11bdbb812aa1dc907d5209c15; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:44:57.515Z.