IAD96LA099 · Aeronca L-3B
Aeronca L-3B · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Morgantown Municipal Airport Walter L. (Bill) Hart Field (MGW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA099
- 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 L-3B
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca L-3
- 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
- N46634
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morgantown Municipal Airport Walter L. (Bill) Hart Field (MGW), WVTo 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Exhaust system, muffler › Failure
- Ignition system, magneto › Shorted
- Maintenance, annual inspection › Inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Morgantown, WV, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that she had been practicing touch-and-go landings on runway 18 for about 40 minutes, when she began to smell '...something burning.' She estimated the airplane was about 100 to 200 feet agl and about one mile from the runway when she began to smell the odor. She attempted to land on runway 36, but the engine lost power completely. The pilot indicated that there wasn't enough altitude to glide to the runway, so she landed in a small field, and the airplane impacted a wood building during the landing roll. Postaccident examination revealed a hole in the muffler shroud and muffler tube, and melted insulation from both magneto 'P' leads, in the vicinity of the muffler hole. The FAA Inspector stated that after 'disconnecting the 'P' lead, the left magneto delivered normal spark to all four cylinders.' Airplane records indicate that the most recent maintenance inspection was an annual inspection, dated May 15, 1995, 13 months before the accident. The airplane had flown 7.7 hours since that inspection.
Probable cause
An inadequate maintenance/annual inspection and failure of the muffler which resulted in melted insulation on the magneto 'P' leads and subsequent loss of engine power. A related factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA099
- Event ID
- 20001208X06013
- Case number
- IAD96LA099
- 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: 5afe915d418e97ab1c54c9e8b846199612ea97275ed551bc3a29c61fe613b6fc; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:13:19.741Z.