NYC03LA028 · Ercoupe 415-CD
Ercoupe 415-CD · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport (GFL) to 3B9 · Chester, CT
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03LA028
- 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
Ercoupe 415-CD
- Aircraft type
- Ercoupe 415
- 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
- C-FXJK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport (GFL), Glens Falls, NYTo 3B9 · Chester, CT
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel contamination
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight, on the third and final leg of a trip, the engine lost all power. The pilot performed a forced landing to a field, and the airplane struck uneven terrain. Examination of the engine revealed a frozen liquid in the gascolator, consistent with water. The pilot reported that prior to the trip, he fueled the airplane with "an old batch" of 80/87 aviation gasoline. The airplane then remained parked in a leaky hangar for approximately 1 month. Before his initial departure, the pilot sumped both wing tanks and the engine sump, but did not observe any water. However, the pilot added that the temperature was very cold, and he believed that water in the fuel tanks had frozen and risen to the surface. During the second leg of the trip, the pilot stopped at an airport and added 5 gallons of 100LL aviation gasoline. He also sumped the tanks after that fueling, and did not observe any water. The reported temperature near the accident site was 22 degrees F.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection of the aircraft, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel contamination. A factor was the cold air temperature.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03LA028
- Event ID
- 20021206X05573
- Case number
- NYC03LA028
- 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: 2cdfa92daa97ddbd44e91e7482dd3b031be13e7c67275ea1555506274df4989c; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:50:04.480Z.