BFO96LA038 · Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415-C
Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415-C · Accident: propeller failure/malfunction en route
From Easton Airport / Newnam Field (ESN) to Salisbury Ocean City Wicomico Regional Airport (SBY)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO96LA038
- 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
Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415-C
- Aircraft type
- Ercoupe (eng Research 415
- 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
- N87424
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Easton Airport / Newnam Field (ESN), Easton, MDTo Salisbury Ocean City Wicomico Regional Airport (SBY), Salisbury, MD
- 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
- Propeller failure/malfunction
- 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
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Fractured
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the airplane was in cruise flight at 1,500 feet MSL when the propeller separated from the airplane. The pilot made an emergency landing in a snow covered field. Upon touchdown in 18-inch deep snow, the nose wheel collapsed. The separated propeller assembly and the attached forward portion of the crankshaft flange were located, and examined in the NTSB laboratory. Postaccident inspection of the crankshaft revealed a spiral crack that intersected the fracture at the bottom corner of a keyway. Further examination showed that the cracks were filled with a iron nitride white layer. Maintenance records indicated that the main journals and pins of the crankshaft were ground, nitrided, inspected, and returned for service, in October, 1994.
Probable cause
inadequate inspection by maintenance personnel which failed to detect a fatigue crack, and resulted in an in-flight crankshaft fracture and propeller assembly separation. A related factor was the deep snow encountered during the subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO96LA038
- Event ID
- 20001208X05102
- Case number
- BFO96LA038
- 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: 895af177f5ac76b8cc214530f3728c36c160d62cfcdb01d9035033c2c33b6598; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:53:02.495Z.