WPR15LA104 · Scottish Aviation BULLDOG - 120 121
Scottish Aviation BULLDOG - 120 121 · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Hayward Executive Airport (HWD) to Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA104
- 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
Scottish Aviation BULLDOG - 120 121
- Aircraft type
- Scottish BULLDOG - 120 121
- 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
- N706BD
- Operator
- David E Olsen · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hayward Executive Airport (HWD), Hayward, CATo Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during initial climb and as the airplane reached about 200 to 300 ft above ground level, the engine lost total power. The pilot attempted to restart the engine without success. He subsequently conducted a forced landing, and the right wing impacted a tree, which resulted in substantial damage to the wing.
A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical failures. After the airplane was placed on a level surface, about 0.75 gallon of water was drained from the fuel system between the airframe fuel filter to the engine fuel flow divider and the fuel flow divider pressure line. The pilot reported that the last time he had fueled the airplane was about 4 months before the accident. He added that he had not experienced fuel contamination previously with the airplane and that he had sumped the fuel system before takeoff. The pilot added that the airplane did sit with one wing lower than the other and that the airplane's nose up-and-level orientation during taxi may have shifted the water in the fuel system. The loss of engine power during the initial climb was likely due to fuel contamination.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during the initial climb due to fuel contamination. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection of the fuel system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA104
- Event ID
- 20150216X00209
- Case number
- WPR15LA104
- 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: 387c9385940832ac734d421fb22aed159ded502d947058837c50cd1d29a4dc34; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:05:18.453Z.