SEA07LA259 · Rose Peregrine
Rose Peregrine · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during takeoff
From 4SD · Reno, NV to 4SD
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07LA259
- 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
Rose Peregrine
- Aircraft type
- Rose PEREGRINE
- 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
- N13NG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4SD · Reno, NVTo 4SD
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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/spin
- 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
- Engine assembly › Overspeed
- Exhaust system, manifold/pipe › Smoke
- Fluid, oil › Leak
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to witnesses, just after takeoff on Runway 08 as the airplane reached an altitude of about 80 feet above the runway, smoke started coming from the lower part of the engine cowling, and the airplane's propeller stopped turning. As the airplane started to descend, the pilot appeared to attempt to turn left in order to land on a crossing runway (Runway 32), but during the turn the airplane appeared to stall and descend into the terrain. The airplane was recovered, and the engine, which had been highly modified for racing, was torn down and inspected. No pre-impact anomalies or malfunctions were discovered during the teardown, except that the exhaust system heat wrap covering near the crankcase breather was covered by a film of oil residue. The conclusion of the owner was that the increase in power and the pitch of the newly installed propeller allowed the engine to overspeed, resulting in the pressurization of the crankcase, and the ejection of an oil mist onto the exhaust system heat wrap. The owner believes that this resulted in the creation of smoke that got into the cockpit, which likely lead the pilot to believe that he may have had an in-flight fire. The pilot, thinking he may have had an in-flight fire, shut the engine down, and attempted a landing on the crossing runway. This was the first flight of the airplane since the engine had been modified to produce more power, and since the airframe had been modified in an attempt to achieve a higher race airspeed. According to the owner, the engine was operating at a compression ratio of 13.5 to 1, and with the newly installed propeller, the engine had reached an on-ground static speed of 3,800 rpm.
Probable cause
The overspeed of the modified racing engine during takeoff that created an oil mist on the exhaust and smoke, and the pilot's failure to maintain a speed above stall speed (Vs) during his attempted emergency landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's diverted attention due to the smoke and the reasonable belief that an in-flight engine compartment fire was occurring.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07LA259
- Event ID
- 20070924X01434
- Case number
- SEA07LA259
- 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 2007-09-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 328c79de73116461fdc0c31240045066e33b1bca1cb7b537972c509317cf8614; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:18:01.924Z.