ERA14LA219 · Czech Sport Aircraft A S SPORTCRUISER
Czech Sport Aircraft A S SPORTCRUISER · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Sugar Valley Airport (5NC2) to Sugar Valley Airport (5NC2)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA219
- 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
Czech Sport Aircraft A S SPORTCRUISER
- Aircraft type
- Czech Sport SPORTCRUISER
- 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
- N162US
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sugar Valley Airport (5NC2), Mocksville, NCTo Sugar Valley Airport (5NC2), Mocksville, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2011)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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 systems
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, about 45 minutes into the local flight and after reducing engine power for the descent, the engine rpm began to decrease. She applied carburetor heat in an attempt to regain full engine power; however, the engine rpm continued to decrease, and the engine then lost total power. She unsuccessfully attempted to restart the engine, performed the emergency engine shutdown procedures, and then chose to land the airplane in a field, during which it sustained substantial damage to the firewall, fuselage, and right wing.
A postaccident examination of the airframe revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The engine was test run and examined about 4 months after the accident. The engine was initially test run using alternate fuel with no anomalies noted. The engine was then test run using fuel found in the left wing tank. During that test run, the engine hesitated, but it did not lose total power. The fuel recovered from the airplane was tested, and it did not meet the specification limits for automotive gas, aviation gas, or UL82 aviation gas; however, it did exhibit characteristics of evaporated automotive gas. Although a white powdery substance was found in the carburetor and the fuel did not meet specifications, due to the amount of time that passed between the accident and the engine examination, it could not be determined whether the powdery substance was in the carburetor, or what the fuel condition was, when the engine lost power.
Weather conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to the accumulation of serious carburetor icing at glide power, and carburetor icing is more likely to form when an engine is operating on automotive gas. In addition, the Pilot's Operating Handbook noted that carburetor heat should be used during descents. Therefore, it is likely that the pilot's delayed application of carburetor heat during the descent resulted in a total loss of engine power due to carburetor icing.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to apply carburetor heat during a descent with reduced engine power while operating in conditions conducive to carburetor icing, which resulted in a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA219
- Event ID
- 20140504X45718
- Case number
- ERA14LA219
- 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: 8f70a1d0e96dba419ae3df296e6b1125091e1e3bd5cc522bd65aaf6fb5c502b3; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:34:30.730Z.