Burton SEAREY N2440S

Summary

On 31 May 2023 at about 19:30 local time, a Burton SEAREY registered N2440S was involved in an accident near Sherrills Ford, North Carolina, United States. 2 people were on board and nobody was injured. The aircraft was substantially damaged. The NTSB has published a probable cause for this accident; it is quoted in full below.

Date

31 May 2023 at 19:30

Classification

Accident

Location

Sherrills Ford, North Carolina, United States

Nearest airport

Long Island Airpark (NC26)

Coordinates

35.6753, -80.9717

Aircraft

Burton SEAREY

Registration

N2440S

Category

Airplane

Year built

1998

Engines

1

Operator

Not recorded

Operating rule

Part 91: General Aviation

Purpose of flight

Personal

Phase of flight

Not recorded

Route

Unknown → Statesville

Aircraft damage

Substantial

Weather

VMC

Light

Day

NTSB number

ERA23LA262

Nobody was injured.

The pilot’s failure to configure the amphibious airplane’s landing gear before conducting a forced landing to a lake after a loss of engine power. Also causal was the occluded gascolator and the pilot’s lack of knowledge about the airplane’s fuel system, which resulted in his failure to locate and identify the condition of the gascolator following a previous loss of engine power event.

Quoted verbatim from the NTSB record. This site does not paraphrase or interpret it.

Read the full NTSB narrative

The pilot of the amphibious, amateur-built airplane, who had purchased the airplane several months earlier and did not hold a rating for airplane single-engine sea, departed the lakefront grass runway and performed a sharp left turn to assume his enroute heading without retracting the airplane’s landing gear. The pilot reported that, about halfway through the turn, the engine exhibited a sudden loss of power but continued running with excessive vibration. Remedial actions to restore power were unsuccessful. The pilot stated that he selected a forced landing site on the lake and moved the landing gear selector to the “up” position with “about 25 ft of altitude nearing 50 mph of airspeed.” Photographs taken by a witness showed that the airplane contacted the water with the landing gear extended. The pilot stated that the airplane pitched forward upon water contact and came to rest upright in the water with substantial damage to the fuselage and right wing strut. Months before the accident, the pilot experienced a power loss event with the airplane that he and other owners of the same airplane make/model could not diagnose, ultimately agreeing that it was a case of the fuel tank unporting due to a low fuel state. Immediately after the accident, the pilot started the engine several times, but it would “choke out” each time. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed a gascolator occluded by rusty particles and containing water and trace amounts of fuel. The pilot reported that he was unaware of this gascolator in the fuel system, and that its occlusion could have led to both engine power loss events. The owner declined to test run the engine after clearing the gascolator of contaminants, citing fears of further damage to the airplane since the engine was loose on its mounts.

Quoted verbatim from the NTSB record.