SEA08LA206 · Stearman Aircraft C3-B
Stearman Aircraft C3-B · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Aurora State Airport (UAO) to Tri Cities Airport (PSC)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA08LA206
- 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
Stearman Aircraft C3-B
- Aircraft type
- Stearman C3
- 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
- N3440
- Operator
- Tobin Larry F
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Aurora State Airport (UAO), Portland, ORTo Tri Cities Airport (PSC), Pascoe, WA
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 reported that he had completed a cross-country flight reenacting the airmail route. During the flight, the pilot had applied carburetor heat, but the engine lost power. He attempted to restart the engine, but was unsuccessful; he then performed a forced landing in a field. During the landing roll, the airplane collided with a tree and sustained substantial damage. While the pilot had purchased the engine and carburetor that were over 60 years old, they were in new condition and had been in storage. A maintenance facility bench tested the carburetor and it checked within limits, but due to its pristine condition it was not disassembled prior to installation on the engine. The carburetor operated for 110 hours before disintegrating gasket material entered into the main fuel jet and disrupted the fuel flow, which allowed the engine to lose power. Postaccident examination of the carburetor showed that after the gasket material was removed from the jet the carburetor operated normally.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation from a piece of disintegrating gasket material that was blocking the fuel jet. Also causal was the failure of maintenance personnel to verify the condition of the gaskets when the carburetor was examined prior to installation on the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA08LA206
- Event ID
- 20081003X17553
- Case number
- SEA08LA206
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 3d7b31e58023a28cc1cbd0606da1aba59409f67486bc2706221d5ec96b276c5d; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:18:14.720Z.