ERA25LA124 · Decker Daniel B SEAREY
Decker Daniel B SEAREY · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA124
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Decker Daniel B SEAREY
- Aircraft type
- Decker Daniel 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
- N40DJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA), Lantana, FLTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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 experimental amateur-built amphibous airplane reported that the wind was variable at 4 knots while he was attempting to land on a lake. The approach was normal; however, the airplane bounced 1 to 3 ft upon touchdown. The pilot opted not to abort the landing and recalled that when the airplane next contacted the water, the (open) cockpit was filled with water. The forward portion of the fuselage was substantially damaged during the accident sequence. The pilot stated that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation, and that the accident could have been prevented with more training on “…the importance of keeping the nose up during water landings.”
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper flare during a bounced water landing, which resulted in a nose-down and submersion of the airplane’s open cockpit in the water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA124
- Event ID
- 20250224199754
- Case number
- ERA25LA124
- 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, cause areas. 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: 413b103cbbfdc26afdb80f7e414e077c478dfdacc7b0c62f50dfbc9f4f100c1a; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:41:24.131Z.