CEN13FA081 · Ercoupe 415-C
Ercoupe 415-C · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Scribner State Airport (KSCB) to Blair Executive Airport (KBTA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA081
- 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
- 1 · 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
Ercoupe 415-C
- Aircraft type
- Ercoupe 415
- 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
- N720RC
- Operator
- Herrick V. Robert · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scribner State Airport (KSCB), Scribner, NETo Blair Executive Airport (KBTA), Blair, NE
- 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 final
- 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 control in flight
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Physical
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses reported seeing a low-flying airplane strike power lines near an auto dealership parking lot. There was a flash of light, and the airplane descended nose down into some parked trucks. When witnesses reached the airplane, the pilot was already deceased. However, none of the described injuries should have been immediately fatal. According to the autopsy report, the 92-year-old pilot’s death was attributed to severe coronary arteriosclerosis and atherosclerosis (quadruple vessel disease). Arteriosclerosis was noted throughout the main coronary arteries. The pilot most likely lost control of his airplane due to an acute coronary event related to his underlying severe coronary artery disease and that he was dead before the aircraft crashed. Federal Aviation Administration medical records, however, did not describe any coronary disease. The toxicology report did not find any medications associated with treated coronary disease. The pilot’s coronary disease likely was undiagnosed.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control due to physical incapacitation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA081
- Event ID
- 20121130X83853
- Case number
- CEN13FA081
- 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: 850dcc6c9ca1ca9f499c6499541a6414eb745f053841fab70593c4fc0b649db2; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:49:39.649Z.