DEN04CA068 · Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415G
Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415G · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From 00V · Peyton, CO to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04CA068
- 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 (Eng & Research Corp.) 415G
- Aircraft type
- Ercoupe (eng Research 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
- N94405
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 00V · Peyton, COTo not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said the airplane was at maximum gross weight. Shortly after departure, he encountered clear air turbulence. At full power of 2,250 rpm and an indicated airspeed of 75 mph, the airplane would not climb. He decided to turn around and return to the airport. After turning onto the downwind leg, the airplane encountered a "rotor wave" and the left wing dropped. The pilot applied full right aileron with no effect. The airplane entered a spiral and impacted terrain. The left wing tip scraped the ground, spinning the airplane around. It became airborne again, then the right main landing gear struck a ditch. This collapsed the nose and right main landing gears. In addition, the right wing was sheared and the empennage was buckled.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control. A contributing factor was the clear air turbulence encounter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04CA068
- Event ID
- 20040524X00637
- Case number
- DEN04CA068
- 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: abb80aa960e24f2bc87949f10e4bd0ffc9fe2b7b46e5be618463ec9ebe77e675; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:14:55.601Z.