Waters Aero-Marine Cessna U206F accident
Cessna U206F · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Islesboro Airport (57B) to Knox County Regional Airport (RKD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA352
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Cessna U206F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N33243
- Operator
- Waters Aero Marine
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Islesboro Airport (57B), Islesboro, METo Knox County Regional Airport (RKD), Rockland, ME
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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 power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During preflight, the pilot sumped the fuel tanks and noticed water in the samples. He continued to sump the tanks until the fuel samples were absent of water. The accident flight was the fourth flight of the day and the airplane accrued 50 minutes of flight time during the 3 previous flights. On the accident flight, engine start, taxi, and takeoff were "normal" until 200 to 300 feet above the ground when "the power started slowly coming off". The pilot rejected an open field to his left for landing due to lack of altitude/glide distance, and chose to land straight ahead in heavily wooded terrain, which resulted in substantial damage to the airplane. After recovery of the airplane, the engine started immediately using the airplane’s battery power, and ran continuously utilizing the airplane’s own fuel system. Fuel drained from the right header tank contained water and a mass that resembled a snail (land mollusk). The mass subsequently dissolved in the sample jar, but the remains were suspended in the water at the bottom of the jar. Fuel sample test results revealed that the fuel sample contained "plasticizers," which are present in many greases, and the bottom of the sample jar contained droplets of water, and a "black particulate" matter that contained both the plasticizers and methyl cellulose, which is a material commonly used in filters.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel contamination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA352
- Event ID
- 20090616X44104
- Case number
- ERA09LA352
- 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: e3e2632eca947e967b99cbae9c8b9e112ec4c0f6f338138eb78814c96fbab60a; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:28:04.631Z.