ERA12LA452 · Aeronca 7CCM
Aeronca 7CCM · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Woods and Lakes Airpark (FA38) to Woods and Lakes Airpark (FA38)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA452
- 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 7CCM
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 7
- 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
- N83977
- Operator
- Leo G Janssens · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Woods and Lakes Airpark (FA38), Ocklawaha, FLTo Woods and Lakes Airpark (FA38), Ocklawaha, FL
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the airplane was last fueled about 3 months prior to the accident and it had not been flown since that day. The pilot added that prior to the accident flight, he conducted a preflight inspection of the airplane, which included verifying that the fuel gauges indicated near full; however, he did not look in the fuel tanks. About 15 minutes after takeoff, about 1,000 feet above ground level, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power. The pilot established the best glide speed and started to look for a possible place to perform a forced landing. At the same time, he initiated emergency procedures, which included switching the fuel tanks, but the engine did not regain power. The pilot subsequently performed a forced landing to a swampy area. During the landing, the airplane traveled about 50 feet, nosed over, and came to rest inverted. Examination of the airplane revealed that the fuel tanks were not compromised and did not leak any fuel into the swamp water. The fuel tanks did not contain any fuel in them and no fuel was observed in the fuel lines or carburetor. The examination of the airplane and engine did not disclose any evidence of a mechanical malfunction that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection, which resulted in a total loss of engine power during cruise flight due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA452
- Event ID
- 20120715X85529
- Case number
- ERA12LA452
- 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: 7b5a8d8a4d411b12d6b695987c8788b4b83efbe1efb58d89715e5146ed6c2364; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:54:10.445Z.