ERA14LA332 · Aeronca 7CCM
Aeronca 7CCM · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Prentiss Jefferson Davis County Airport (M43) to Collins, MS (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA332
- 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
- N82442
- Operator
- Hooks Sammie
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Prentiss Jefferson Davis County Airport (M43), Prentiss, MSTo Collins, MS (no airport)
- Aircraft age
- About 68 years (built 1946)
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the airplane departed on a planned 20-minute flight with 9 gallons of gasoline on board. Toward the end of the flight, the engine suddenly lost all power without warning. He switched from the header fuel tank to the right main fuel tank and set up for a forced landing to a hayfield. Just before landing, the engine regained power for about 3 seconds and then again lost all power. The momentary gain in power placed the airplane on a high glidepath for the hayfield. The pilot did not want to risk landing in the surrounding trees, and the airplane stalled as he was maneuvering to land in the hayfield.
Examination of the wreckage revealed that adequate fuel remained onboard. Examination of the engine did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. The propeller was able to be rotated by hand, and thumb compression was attained on all cylinders. Although the recorded temperature and dew point at the time of the accident were conducive to serious carburetor icing at glide power, the engine was at cruise power when the power loss occurred. The pilot could not locate the aircraft logbooks, but a mechanic stated that an annual inspection had been completed about 1 year before the accident.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident engine examination revealed no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA332
- Event ID
- 20140708X45159
- Case number
- ERA14LA332
- 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: bced7c84a45d6f7549ede8fcc629c41027649540ce0b7429cc6b1c39101a949e; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:51:32.869Z.