CHI97LA101 · Aeronca 7CCM
Aeronca 7CCM · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA101
- 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 7CCM
- 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
- N85257
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Fuel system, line › Ice
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had fueled the airplane with auto gas 1 1/2 weeks prior to the accident. The tanks were 3/4 full on the day of the accident, and the temperature at the time of departure was 19 degrees Fahrenheit. The pilot climbed to 150 feet to 200 feet AGL in order look for some cows. He had been flying for about 25 minutes when the engine RPM dropped by 300 RPM. He shoved the throttle full in but the engine did not respond. He pulled the carburetor heat on and the engine RPM decreased by another 200 RPM. The pilot turned toward a stubble field. The airplane was still losing altitude. He tried to 'get the RPM's up,' but was unable to regain engine RPM. The pilot reported that a wind gust might have 'caught me and pulled me to the ground.' The airplane impacted the ground. The spark plugs were removed and were found to be worn and carbon fouled. The air intake filter was grimy. The fuel line to the carburetor had a small ice pellet formation around 1/5 the circumference of the metal neck where it flared into the carburetor B-nut. The aircraft had not received an annual maintenance inspection.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power due to ice in the fuel line. A factor was inadequate maintenance and inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA101
- Event ID
- 20001208X07681
- Case number
- CHI97LA101
- 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: 63511de76fd6e130bb0e753fe8773bb0251753d0223ee15e758df3579bbf5a19; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:11:22.950Z.