WPR09LA452 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during takeoff
From Santa Paula Airport (SZP) to Santa Paula Airport (SZP)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09LA452
- 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
- N326DW
- Operator
- Williams Dianne e
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Paula Airport (SZP), Santa Paula, CATo Santa Paula Airport (SZP), Santa Paula, CA
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed a preflight inspection, which included a visual confirmation of the fuel in each tank. Using a fuel quantity stick that the pilot had calibrated, she estimated that both the left and right wing fuel tanks contained about 6 gallons of fuel. She performed two uneventful touch-and-go landings, followed by a full-stop landing. While turning the airplane into the left crosswind after the fourth takeoff, the engine lost all power. The pilot force-landed the airplane in an adjacent dry riverbed, where it sustained substantial damage to the firewall, fuselage, and tail. Postaccident examination revealed a residual quantity of fuel in the left fuel tank; however, damage to the airplane and its subsequent inverted attitude could have caused fuel to drain from this tank prior to inspection. Additionally, fuel was observed in the fuel line leading to the carburetor. The pilot reported the total duration of the flight to be 0.2 hours. Data was not available to confirm the airplane's fuel consumption during takeoff and climb phases. Further examination of the engine and airframe did not reveal obvious anomalies that would have explained the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during takeoff for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09LA452
- Event ID
- 20090916X20357
- Case number
- WPR09LA452
- 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. 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: d96fe20704b1e693fe5491da3bfdfe23661c620f42482a0253d078e6aa4b2768; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:18:44.209Z.