CEN15LA177 · Ercoupe 415 C
Ercoupe 415 C · Accident: fuel contamination on approach
From A Paul Vance Fredericktown Regional Airport (H88) to 3K6 · St Jacob, IL
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA177
- 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
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
- N87EV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From A Paul Vance Fredericktown Regional Airport (H88), Fredericktown, MOTo 3K6 · St Jacob, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 69 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was flying the accident airplane under a ferry permit to the destination airport. However, due to unsafe runway conditions at the destination, he chose to land at an alternate airport nearby. Upon arrival at the alternate airport, the pilot executed an aborted landing. He applied engine power and climbed the airplane to about 150 to 200 ft and then the engine lost power without any warning. During the forced landing, the airplane sustained substantial wing and firewall damage. During a postaccident engine run using the header tank fuel from the accident flight, the engine started, ran roughly, and would not accelerate smoothly. The header tank was drained, and fresh aviation fuel was added to the tank; the engine then ran smoothly and accelerated normally. The engine likely lost power due to contaminated fuel.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during the go-around due to fuel contamination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA177
- Event ID
- 20150323X10450
- Case number
- CEN15LA177
- 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: 804b85535e088addb785f8b5a813fac1e58fde57d5036f6c39ed5ffe629c47af; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:10:19.590Z.