ERA10LA504 · Aeronca 11AC
Aeronca 11AC · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Twin Lakes Airport (8A7) to Twin Lakes Airport (8A7)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA504
- 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
Aeronca 11AC
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 11
- 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
- N85929
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Twin Lakes Airport (8A7), Mocksville, NCTo Twin Lakes Airport (8A7), Mocksville, NC
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the airplane was on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, when it experienced a complete loss of engine power. He was able to glide the airplane onto the runway; however, he subsequently realized that he would not be able to stop before the end of the runway, and elected to turn right into bushes, rather than encounter the down-sloping terrain located beyond the runway. The airplane contacted the bushes, and flipped over, prior to coming to rest, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing, fuselage, and empennage. A postaccident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any mechanical malfunctions which would have resulted in a loss of engine power. The pilot stated that he believed the loss of engine power was due to carburetor icing, and that he had applied carburetor heat, just prior to the loss of engine power. Review of a carburetor icing envelope chart revealed that the temperature and dew point reported at an airport located about 11 miles southeast of the accident site, at the time of the accident, was within the "serious icing (glide power)" area of the chart.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to attain the proper touchdown point, following a loss of engine power due to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA504
- Event ID
- 20100928X85616
- Case number
- ERA10LA504
- 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: ceeedde256bb9eee5bb4ae9afe91ed13f520dee428ce29349efac51794b0039b; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:24:31.908Z.