ERA13LA221 · Aeronca 11AC
Aeronca 11AC · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) en route
From Chapin Field (1B8) to Chapin Field (1B8)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA221
- 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
- N3503E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chapin Field (1B8), Cambridge, NYTo Chapin Field (1B8), Cambridge, NY
- 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
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 structures
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
One witness reported observing the airplane "flying sideways" and another witness reported observing the airplane operating "in a large circular motion…losing altitude." The airplane subsequently impacted the ground in a nose-down attitude. Examination of the airplane revealed that the left wing was separated from its aft wing attachment bracket. Further examination of both wings' aft attachment brackets revealed that the welds had not fully penetrated into the base material and that they were of poor workmanship. No maintenance records were found indicating that the brackets had ever been replaced or welded; therefore, it could not be determined when or by whom the welds were made. Due to their location on the attachment brackets, the pilot would not have been able to detect that the welds were inadequate during his visual inspection of the airplane. Based on the evidence, it is likely that the left wing attachment bracket weld failed in flight, which resulted in the pilot being unable to maintain airplane control due to the wing's trailing edge being unattached. Although both wings' aft attachment brackets exhibited evidence of overstress fractures, these likely occurred during ground impact.
Probable cause
The failure of the left wing attachment bracket weld due to inadequate welding by unknown maintenance personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA221
- Event ID
- 20130429X63152
- Case number
- ERA13LA221
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: a98804dcd75b646929521e6e51e40e70085d21336b044f6cf9bed1d5dcee1c31; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:22:32.181Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure, destination. Misspelled city name; 1B8 is Cambridge Airport, Cambridge, NY. Misspelled city name; 1B8 is Cambridge Airport, Cambridge, NY.