WPR12LA264 · Luscombe 8 E
Luscombe 8 E · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Twentynine Palms Airport (TNP) to Big Bear City Airport (L35)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA264
- 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
Luscombe 8 E
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N2435K
- Operator
- Nicholas M Cain · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Twentynine Palms Airport (TNP), Twentynine Palms, CATo Big Bear City Airport (L35), Big Bear City, 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before departure, the pilot refueled the right wing tank with 11.34 gallons of 100LL aviation fuel; the left wing tank contained 12.5 gallons at the time of takeoff. After taking off and while in a shallow climb, the engine lost power. The pilot reported that after switching tanks and confirming that the mixture was FULL RICH, there was no change in the power. He then selected a dirt road and made an emergency landing during which the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted. During the onsite postaccident examination on the day after the accident, no fuel was present at the accident site; however fuel could drain from the filler cap. Examination of the engine found no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the engine that would have precluded normal operation. The investigation was unable to determine the cause of the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power during initial climb for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA264
- Event ID
- 20120614X90135
- Case number
- WPR12LA264
- 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: c658ebe5efaaee1fbe10e6f93054e57ae8a09048418b9f46e8444f3b7431a0cc; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:30:52.234Z.