SEA00LA191 · Aeronca 11BC
Aeronca 11BC · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From S50 to Norman Grier Field (S36)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA191
- 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 11BC
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 11
- 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
- N3954E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From S50To Norman Grier Field (S36), CREST AIRPARK, WA
- 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
- Taxi
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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 › Tie down, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot fueled the tail-wheel equipped Aeronca 11BC aircraft prior to a planned departure. The aircraft was not equipped with a parking brake, and the lack of an electric starter required hand propping to start the engine. The pilot secured the aircraft with a length of rope with one end connected at the aircraft's releasable tie-down tail hook, and the opposing end tied to a Chevron sign post. Initial attempts to start the aircraft with the throttle closed were unsuccessful, and the pilot then 'cracked' the throttle and hand propped the engine, which started immediately. The pilot reported that she 'saw the aircraft idling too fast and moving forward.' The rope then broke and the aircraft taxied into the metal barricades protecting the fuel pumps. The pilot reported that she carried chocks in the aircraft but had not used them at the time of the engine start.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately secure the aircraft prior to a manual engine start. A contributing factor was the excessive throttle setting on start.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA191
- Event ID
- 20001212X22084
- Case number
- SEA00LA191
- 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: 5d445e63a6f6e98ed222a49558a4441c0042ff4f67c9470381f71c1831611f64; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:25:26.906Z.