ERA10LA437 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Southern Cross Airport (C01) to Southern Cross Airport (C01)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA437
- 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
Piper J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N209RC
- Operator
- Capece Richard N
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southern Cross Airport (C01), Williamstown, NJTo Southern Cross Airport (C01), Williamstown, NJ
- 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
- 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 (partial)
- 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
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 had not been flown recently so the pilot elected to conduct two preflight inspections, an engine run-up, and two full-power takeoff test runs where the airplane became momentarily airborne with no discrepancies noted. During the accident flight takeoff, the airplane accelerated and became airborne at the same point along the runway as it had during the two test runs. While climbing out on the runway heading, the pilot noticed that the engine was suddenly no longer developing full takeoff power. He decided that the airplane was too far down the runway to abort the takeoff and continued the forward flight path. The airplane cleared powerlines at the departure end of the runway and the pilot maneuvered to perform a forced landing in an adjacent field. The airplane then collided with the tops of trees and impacted an unoccupied parked car. A postaccident inspection of the engine revealed weak spark from both spark plugs of the No. 1 cylinder, and the bottom plugs in the remaining cylinders were oil soaked and exhibited weak spark. The cylinders were replaced about 4 years prior to the accident equating to 6 flight hours.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power during takeoff due to weak spark plugs on the No. 1 cylinder.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA437
- Event ID
- 20100823X13641
- Case number
- ERA10LA437
- 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: 3326cd456e5b501b1339da031c9b0b0ef34ff2ece7e8f4ed6a9a5e39f824e285; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:55:11.953Z.