ERA11LA325 · Clamar Floats Inc CA-4
Clamar Floats Inc CA-4 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Merritt Island, FL to Merritt Island, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11LA325
- 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
Clamar Floats Inc CA-4
- Aircraft type
- Clamar Floats CA-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
- N434JC
- Operator
- Clamar Floats
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merritt Island, FLTo Merritt Island, FL
- 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
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the experimental amateur-built amphibian airplane's first water takeoff, the engine began to lose manifold pressure. The airplane stopped climbing, and, as the engine continued to lose power, the pilot initiated a turn and prepared for a forced landing on the water. Although the pilot attempted to flare for landing, the airplane landed hard in a left wing-low attitude. The left float separated from the airplane, the right float folded upward, and the airplane sank. The airplane was recovered from the water, and a postaccident examination was scheduled. However, despite clear instructions not to disassemble the airplane before the examination, the owner proceeded to do so. As a result, any evidence of a preimpact mechanical anomaly was compromised, and the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined. The pilot, who had been hired by the owner to fly the airplane during its first 40 hours, reported that he had previously made 12 flights in the airplane from a paved runway. He stated that a possible scenario for the power loss was water ingestion by the engine during the takeoff run due to the lack of spray rails installed on the floats and the location of the air intake on a low point of the cowling.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during takeoff for reasons that could not be determined because a postaccident examination could not be performed before the airplane was disassembled.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11LA325
- Event ID
- 20110604X90732
- Case number
- ERA11LA325
- 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, 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: 9596af3264d57d201f3136b7bf37fe8f8d097529d5cce71c5a18fcdff24af0ec; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:14:50.433Z.