WPR10LA477 · Eccker HURRICANE HAULER
Eccker HURRICANE HAULER · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From OCL3 · San Diego, CA to OCL3 · San Diego, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA477
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Eccker HURRICANE HAULER
- Aircraft type
- Eccker HURRICANE HAULER
- 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
- N7519W
- Operator
- Finck David B
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From OCL3 · San Diego, CATo OCL3 · San Diego, 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
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight, the airplane's engine began to lose power and eventually stopped running. The pilot performed a forced landing in a field. During the landing roll, the airplane impacted a fence, substantially damaging the airframe and wings. According to the pilot, the airplane's two-cycle engine is designed to receive lubrication to the piston via engine oil premixed into the automobile gasoline. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed excessive carbon buildup on the piston rings, which more than likely reduced the lubrication between the piston rings and the cylinder wall and led to overheating and a subsequent seizure of the engine.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during cruise flight due to engine seizure as a result of lack of lubrication from excessive carbon buildup on the piston rings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA477
- Event ID
- 20100930X31940
- Case number
- WPR10LA477
- 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: 34c0f16fb3c9b3149ce2728f88bbf639d31a2beee89f972936b57e896b3e68c9; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:26:05.346Z.