LAX98LA151 · Luscombe 8E
Luscombe 8E · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA151
- 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
Luscombe 8E
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N2435K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN), CATo 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, improper use of
- Terrain condition › Rough/uneven
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had been flying approximately 500 to 800 feet below a cloud layer that he estimated to be broken at 4,000 agl. He noted a loss of engine power and rpm's, and applied carburetor heat. Engine power and rpm cleared up, but then ran rough again with the pilot making a precautionary landing in an open field. After touchdown, the pilot encountered poor braking action due to the wet grass. The aircraft came to rest inverted after colliding with a furrow which crossed the field. A weather reporting system located approximately 20 nm from the accident site reported a temperature of 64 degrees and a dew point of 55 degrees Fahrenheit. According to the carburetor ice probability chart, the potential existed for moderate icing during cruise at those temperatures. The cloud layer was reported as broken with the lowest layer at 7,000 feet. The estimated freezing level in the accident area was approximately 8,500 feet msl.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper use of carburetor heat and the rough/uneven (furrowed) terrain. A contributing factor was carburetor icing conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA151
- Event ID
- 20001211X10123
- Case number
- LAX98LA151
- 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: 98f9dbeac7c0af6b54f04fd6169ba1f4f938629d94073611727108015ac54a3e; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:49:46.310Z.