LAX03LA260 · Ercoupe 415-C
Ercoupe 415-C · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From St Johns Industrial Air Park (SJN) to St Johns Industrial Air Park (SJN)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA260
- 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-C
- 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
- N3182H
- Operator
- Robert Greenwade
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Johns Industrial Air Park (SJN), Saint Johns, AZTo St Johns Industrial Air Park (SJN)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Engine assembly, valve, exhaust › Failure, total
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 lost engine power and collided with a ditch while executing a forced landing to a dirt road. Just before the pilot turned on to an extended final approach to the runway, the "engine started hammering." The pilot was not able to increase the engine power enough to maintain level flight. He landed on a dirt road one and a half miles east of the airport. Upon landing, the airplane veered off a curve in the road into a drainage ditch, collapsing the nose gear. The airplane then nosed over on the other side of the ditch. Examination of the engine revealed a failed exhaust valve on the number two cylinder.
Probable cause
The failure of the exhaust valve on the number two engine cylinder, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power during the final approach to land, and an on ground collision with a ditch during the subsequent off-airport landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA260
- Event ID
- 20030827X01411
- Case number
- LAX03LA260
- 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: 7282150cf81ac8a3b0c16d5ff56d97a769b3c388658a66d45db573e04b8aa44d; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:40:25.336Z.