ERA15LA271 · Young John E SEAREY
Young John E SEAREY · Accident en route
From London-Corbin Airport/Magee Field (LOZ) to Lake Cumberland, KY
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA271
- 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
Young John E SEAREY
- Aircraft type
- Young John SEAREY
- 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
- N236JY
- Operator
- LeRoy Moore, Jr
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From London-Corbin Airport/Magee Field (LOZ), London, KYTo Lake Cumberland, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 18 years (built 1997)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 student pilot/owner stated that he intended on flying to a nearby lake to perform water landings and takeoffs in the amphibious airplane. The pilot reported that, during cruise flight, either the water/coolant or oil temperature reading indicated 235 degrees F, which he believed was above the normal reading. Due to a lack of suitable terrain between the airplane's position at that time and the departure point, he chose to perform a precautionary landing on a nearby lake. The pilot reported that the landing was normal, but a witness reported seeing a large plume of water at touchdown engulf the airplane, which is not consistent with a normal landing. The pilot reported that, about 100 ft after touchdown on the water, the airplane's hull hit a submerged object, which damaged it and allowed water to enter the airplane. Postrecovery examination of the flight controls and of the engine and its cooling system components revealed no evidence of a preimpact failure or malfunction.
Examination of the airplane revealed cracks in the hull above the left and right main landing gear and numerous stress fractures and outer fiberglass separations with no evidence of punctures or solid-impact signatures. Although the airplane's attitude and configuration at impact could not be determined, the airplane damage was consistent with either touchdown in an excessively nose-down attitude or with the landing gear extended.
Although the previous owner reported that the airplane had previously experienced issues related to the cooling system, the issues were attributed to operating the engine with low or no coolant in the engine or expansion tank; postaccident examination of the coolant system revealed that there was sufficient coolant in the expansion tank and overflow bottle. Further, examination of the engine revealed that it had a sufficient oil level.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper conduct of a precautionary landing, which resulted in abnormal water contact that damaged the hull.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA271
- Event ID
- 20150718X93310
- Case number
- ERA15LA271
- 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: 267c3aff3aa55b592e987d176231108c5a302dfc8e81debf33a22aa7e4e2ab0c; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:32:47.873Z.