LAX95LA150 · Aeronca 7AC
Aeronca 7AC · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Gillespie Field (SEE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX95LA150
- 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
- 0
- 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
Aeronca 7AC
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 7
- 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
- N1937E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gillespie Field (SEE)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Fuel system, gascolator › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT WAS CONDUCTING A LOCAL VFR FLIGHT AND THE PILOT EXECUTED AN EMERGENCY LANDING ON A ROUGH/UNEVEN FIELD FOLLOWING A TOTAL LOSS OF POWER. RESPONDING FIRE DEPARTMENT PERSONNEL AND FAA INSPECTORS DID NOT FIND ANY FUEL IN THE AIRCRAFT FUEL TANKS OR ON THE GROUND. THE AIRCRAFT WAS EQUIPPED WITH AN ORIGINAL EQUIPMENT GLASS GASCOLATOR BOWL. THE FUEL SYSTEM GASCOLATOR BOWL WAS NOT FOUND IN THE ENGINE COMPARTMENT OR ON THE GROUND ANYWHERE AT THE ACCIDENT SITE. INVESTIGATION REVEALED THAT THE MANUFACTURER RECOMMENDED REPLACEMENT OF THE GLASS GASCOLATOR BOWL WITH A METAL BOWL IN A SERVICE LETTER ISSUED IN 1946. THE ACTION WAS TAKEN DUE TO INCIDENCE OF THE GLASS BOWLS BREAKING IN FLIGHT. THE GLASS BOWL REPLACEMENT WAS NOT A SUBJECT OF ANY AIRWORTHINESS DIRECTIVES ON THE ACCIDENT AIRPLANE MAKE OR MODEL.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power due to an in-flight separation of the fuel system gascolator glass bowl resulting in a premature fuel exhaustion. The rough/uneven terrain is a factor in this accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX95LA150
- Event ID
- 20001207X03155
- Case number
- LAX95LA150
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 3dc89f70de5150c6f704db26deadebef9882a72bbbf9cea7d959987a8366b04a; retrieved 2026-09-21T13:23:51.215Z.