SEA01LA109 · Luscombe 8F
Luscombe 8F · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Green Tree, OR to Salem-Willamette Valley Airport/McNary Field (SLE)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA109
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 8F
- 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
- N1389B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Green Tree, ORTo Salem-Willamette Valley Airport/McNary Field (SLE), Salem, OR
- 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 engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the first pilot, the airplane was in a level cruise flight configuration approximately 1,300 - 1,400 feet mean sea level (MSL) when the engine suddenly lost power. After confirming the engine failure, the first pilot initiated an off-airport forced landing to an open field located approximately 2 1/2 miles from Salem, OR. He stated that he intentionally stalled the airplane just before touchdown in an effort to prevent the airplane from "… flipping on it's back in the tall grass." When the airplane touched down, the main landing gear collapsed. A representative from the Portland, Oregon, Flight Standards District Office examined the wreckage and reported that there was no evidence found to indicate a mechanical malfunction or failure of the airframe, engine or associated components. At the conclusion of the inspection, the airplane's carburetor was shipped to the manufacture for further examination and testing. Representatives from Precision Aviation Products Corporation and the NTSB examined the airplane's carburetor. Flow bench testing and disassembly of the carburetor revealed no abnormalities with the carburetor
Probable cause
Loss of engine power during cruise flight for an undetermined reason. A factor in the accident was tall grass in the landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA109
- Event ID
- 20010608X01130
- Case number
- SEA01LA109
- 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: c0af3717a2258049cbb094f95ecfc924d312d3d6fa9cdde4f1c57de0b7c8582f; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:55:04.943Z.