DFW06LA007 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Gastons Airport (3M0) to CWS · Conway, AR
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW06LA007
- 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
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
- N72901
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gastons Airport (3M0), Lakeview, ARTo CWS · Conway, AR
- 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
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 345-hour private pilot completed a detailed preflight inspection and determined he had 26 gallons of fuel on-board for a cross-country flight. He then departed his home airfield, to pick up a passenger at another airfield approximately 17 nautical miles away The pilot then departed for another airfield located about 76 nautical miles away; no problems were noted during these flights. However, ten minutes after departing his last airfield, the engine experienced a loss of RPM. The pilot ran the emergency checklist and searched for a place to land as the airplane was unable to maintain altitude. The airplane had experienced several loss of engine power events before, but each time the pilot was able to make a safe landing. The first time was shortly after being sold to a new buyer; an inspection of the airplane's fuel tanks, revealed contamination in the form of "beads" in the fuel tank. Shortly after having the tanks flushed, the second loss of power event happened, (after each event, and after the airplane had landed the engine would produce power again). The carburetor was examined and the airplane returned to service. Approximately 15-30 hours later, another loss of power event happened. This time the carburetor was sent to a repair facility, which rebuilt the carburetor and told the owner that a "wrong jet" had been installed in the carburetor. The airplane then flew another 50-60 hours without a re-occurrence. The airplane's original fuel caps were replaced, sometime prior to the accident. The fuel caps installed on the airplane were an aftermarket design, with the label "2646V" inked on the top of the caps. The vent holes in these caps were less than half the size of the original fuel caps. Additionally, it was possible for the gasket (in the fuel cap) to cover one or both of the vent holes. A review of the airplane's records failed to reveal when the original fuel caps were replaced. The reason for the reported loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW06LA007
- Event ID
- 20051024X01715
- Case number
- DFW06LA007
- 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: c9d704db2cad7d092280b0d79de731adabc3fdee10530c354261d2aff7cae985; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:02:12.893Z.