CHI08CA298 · Lake LA-4
Lake LA-4 · Accident: ground collision while taxiing
From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET) to Algonac, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08CA298
- 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
Lake LA-4
- Aircraft type
- Lake LA-4
- 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
- N1147L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET), Detroit, MITo Algonac, MI
- 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
- Taxi
- Defining eventThe 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
- Ground collision
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after departure he proceeded to a nearby lake in order to practice water takeoffs and landings. After landing, the water conditions became too rough to safely takeoff. The pilot elected to water taxi to a bay area near an island for smoother conditions. He stated that as he crossed near the southern tip of the island, the airplane struck a submerged object. He estimated the airplane's speed at the time as approximately 6 miles per hour. He steered the airplane toward deeper water; however, after about 3 minutes his feet were under water. He subsequently taxied into water about 3 feet deep and came to rest with the landing gear down. He noted that the airplane normally sat about 18 inches deep in the water. The depth finder did not alert him to the presence of the submerged object prior to the collision.
Probable cause
The amphibious airplane's collision with submerged debris during taxi for takeoff, and the resulting damage to the hull.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08CA298
- Event ID
- 20081208X52705
- Case number
- CHI08CA298
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: 4017f6630fb26be4447cb4e56fe72d2c692b5b93378ba9127f95bb12246750b5; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:35:38.461Z.