CHI98LA094 · Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415-C
Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415-C · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Rock County Airport (RBE) to Miller Field (VTN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA094
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument 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
- N99270
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rock County Airport (RBE), Bassett, NETo Miller Field (VTN), Valentine, NE
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Stall
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, intentional
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
- Wing › Ice
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot took off from Bassett, Nebraska, in a misty, light rain, at about 1930 central standard time (cst), en route to Valentine, Nebraska [60 miles away]. At approximately 2100 cst, the airport manager at Valentine received a telephone call from the pilot's sister, inquiring as to her brother's whereabouts. The airport manager called the fixed base operator at Bassett. The pilot's sister contacted the Cherry County, Nebraska, Sheriff's Department, and reported the pilot missing. The Nebraska Wing of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), began an aerial search for the pilot's airplane at 2240 cst. The search was terminated 30 minutes later, when the CAP pilot began picking up ice on the airplane at 1,000 feet above ground level (agl). The aerial search was re-convened the following morning. The wreckage was found at approximately 0830 cst. The Aviation Routine Weather Report (METAR) station at Ainsworth, Nebraska, at 1952 cst, reported an overcast ceiling of 3,400 and 10 miles visibility. The sheriff, who was part of the ground search the night of the accident, described the weather as being a mixture of freezing drizzle, rain, and snow, with low clouds and low ceilings. On arrival at the accident site the following day, the sheriff said that he felt ice on the surface of one of the airplane's wings. Examination of the wreckage revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot's intentional flight into adverse weather conditions, the wing ice, and the inadvertent stall. Factors contributing to this accident were the rain, freezing rain and low ceilings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA094
- Event ID
- 20001211X09528
- Case number
- CHI98LA094
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-02-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fc0744050467880ca3eb04c3977c30cac0031c987be461102dd6e67b4724f615; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:40:48.382Z.