GAA19CA051 · RIchard Silva Seawind 3000
RIchard Silva Seawind 3000 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Pocono Summit, PA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19CA051
- 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
RIchard Silva Seawind 3000
- Aircraft type
- Richard Silva SEAWIND
- 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
- N46SW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pocono Summit, PATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 25 years (built 1993)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- 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 reported that he attempted to take off from a lake with a 20- to 30-knot crosswind. A video of the takeoff showed that, as the right wing lifted, the left wingtip contacted the water. Subsequently, the seaplane bounced and impacted the water hard with the nose oriented to the left. The pilot was able to correct the course heading and continued to water taxi without further incident. The pilot added that he should not have departed in high crosswind conditions and admitted to pilot error. The seaplane sustained substantial damage to the right aileron. The Federal Aviation Administration inspector who conducted a postaccident examination of the seaplane reported that he established flight control continuity and that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the seaplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to attempt to take off from a lake in high crosswind conditions, which resulted in the right wing lifting, the left wing impacting the water, and the airplane bouncing and then impacting the water hard.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA19CA051
- Event ID
- 20181012X61744
- Case number
- GAA19CA051
- 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: b7fa382d4690935591ab09d9ce2f634f9ae9a960f9a4b1e132a0d66ba815662d; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:20:17.232Z.