IAD01LA007 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From 1N9 · Allentown, PA to State College Regional Airport (UNV)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD01LA007
- 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
Cessna 140
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N279W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1N9 · Allentown, PATo State College Regional Airport (UNV), State College, PA
- 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
- Total 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
- Fluid, fuel › Blocked(total)
- Terrain condition › None suitable
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane experienced a total loss of engine power about 1 hour after departure. The pilot performed a forced landing to a cornfield and the airplane nosed over during the landing roll. When the airplane was uprighted during recovery, fuel poured from both fuel tanks. The engine was then started and it ran without interruption. However, examination of the fuel system revealed a handful of sloshing-sealant particles blocked the fuel strainer in the left fuel tank. Examination of the airplane's maintenance records revealed the left fuel tank was sealed with sloshing sealant during a major repair 43 years prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power over unsuitable terrain due to fuel starvation from a fuel strainer blocked with sealant particles.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD01LA007
- Event ID
- 20001212X22169
- Case number
- IAD01LA007
- 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, coordinates. 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: 326dbf0b127ce64c449802a9a5f60a2bebceae6a6e8c6d0211560615b399297d; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:21:57.601Z.