ERA14CA225 · Lake LA-4
Lake LA-4 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Fairfield County Airport (FDW) to Chapin, SC
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA225
- 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
- N1029L
- Operator
- Jay E Seward II · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairfield County Airport (FDW), Winnsboro, SCTo Chapin, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1963)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 of the amphibian airplane stated that the airplane was properly configured for landing on a lake, with the landing gear retracted and the flaps extended. The approach was normal; however, the pilot heard a loud bang immediately after touchdown and felt a lateral force in the cockpit. He then observed that the right wing pontoon had separated and he exited the cockpit before the airplane sank. Two witnesses were in a nearby boat and rescued the pilot. The witnesses reported that the pilot commented about the accident landing. He stated that it was only his fourth landing on the water and that the water was calm, which can affect depth perception. The witnesses added that the right wing pontoon contacted the water first, which spun the airplane. The airplane sank in an area of the lake that was approximately 120 feet deep. As of 60 days after the accident, the wreckage had not been located and recovered. The right pontoon was recovered. The pilot possessed a single-engine sea rating and reported 21 hours in the make and model airplane. He also reported 4,360 total hours of flight experience.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare, which resulted in abnormal contact with the water and separation of the right pontoon..
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA225
- Event ID
- 20140507X84024
- Case number
- ERA14CA225
- 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: fdb6a43f2e80b553e413910aa4a6f076e277c7d7e502b263a5581feb2270fe44; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:36:02.686Z.