CEN13LA305 · Stinson 108-3
Aircapital Nevada Stinson 108-3 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Beaumont Municipal Airport (BMT) to Easterwood Field (CLL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA305
- 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
Stinson 108-3
- Aircraft type
- Stinson 108
- 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
- N121CM
- Operator
- Aircapital Nevada
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Beaumont Municipal Airport (BMT), Beaumont, TXTo Easterwood Field (CLL), College Station, TX
- 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 · climb to 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 (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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- 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
The pilot reported that the airplane's engine lost partial power shortly after takeoff. The airplane was unable to maintain altitude, so he executed a forced landing to a field, and the airplane nosed over. Postaccident examination revealed that the rubber boot between the carburetor heat box and cowl was missing its forward clamp, which was not found in the wreckage The clamp was likely missing because an improper clamp was used or a clamp was not installed properly, which allowed the boot to come loose and to be ingested into the inlet of the carburetor heat box, restricting the airflow and resulting in a rich fuel mixture and the subsequent partial loss of engine power. No other anomalies were found with the engine or its systems.
Probable cause
The lack of a forward clamp on the carburetor heat box rubber boot, which allowed the boot to be ingested into the inlet of the carburetor heat box, restricting the airflow and leading to a subsequent partial loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA305
- Event ID
- 20130529X10741
- Case number
- CEN13LA305
- 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: 223b0ba93ecea721315ec7633d197a84facbde0c93a596799827246454250ea8; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:40:55.409Z.