NYC00LA185 · Ercoupe FORNEY F-1
Ercoupe FORNEY F-1 · Accident en route
From Kent State University Airport (1G3) to Montgomery County Airpark (GAI)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA185
- 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 FORNEY F-1
- Aircraft type
- Ercoupe FORNEY F-1
- 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
- N7518C
- Operator
- Weston H. Moran · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kent State University Airport (1G3), Kent, OHTo Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Lubricating system, oil line › Cut/severed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight at 5,500 feet (msl), the pilot experienced smoke in the cockpit and noticed the engine oil pressure had dropped to zero. The pilot elected to make a precautionary landing to a grass field. During the approach, the pilot realized the airplane's approach speed was too fast to touchdown on the grass field, and he performed a landing to an adjacent corn field. During the landing, the airplane's left wing and empennage were damaged. Examination of the airplane revealed that the airplane's engine oil pressure line was severed. Oil was found in the engine compartment and streaks of oil were observed on the right side of the fuselage. Additionally, only about 1/2 of a quart of oil remained in the engine's oil sump. No other discrepancies were noted.
Probable cause
A severed oil pressure line, which resulted in an off airport landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA185
- Event ID
- 20001212X21571
- Case number
- NYC00LA185
- 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: 640700a4923184e7200aeb1a62b9a3a4789a7f94f3fe6d15796e86694c62995e; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:42:44.618Z.