ERA15LA265 · Luscombe 8A
Luscombe 8A · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Mid Florida at Eustis Airport (X55) to Mid Florida at Eustis Airport (X55)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA265
- 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
Luscombe 8A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N28864
- Operator
- Simpson V David · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid Florida at Eustis Airport (X55), Mount Dora, FLTo Mid Florida at Eustis Airport (X55), Mount Dora, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 75 years (built 1940)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 flight instructor reported that, during the initial climb for the local, instructional flight with the student pilot/owner at the controls, the engine began to lose power. The flight instructor assumed the controls and attempted a forced landing on a road in a residential area. During the forced landing, the left wing struck a tree, and the airplane then came to rest upright, which resulted in structural damage to the airframe.
During postaccident examination, dark, granular sediment was found inside the fuel tank, and it was of sufficient quantity to interrupt fuel flow to the engine. The airplane had been stored outside; it could not be determined how, or when, the granular contamination was introduced into the fuel tank.
An examination of the engine and fuel system revealed evidence of some leakage around the carburetor, and the cylinders around the exhaust valves showed signatures consistent with operation at high exhaust gas temperatures. Examination of the fuel tank revealed that it contained automotive gasoline (auto gas). The student pilot believed that the use of auto gas was permitted; however, no supplemental type certificate (STC) for the use of auto gas existed, and the airplane was not placarded for auto gas use. The auto gas also might have contained ethanol, which was not permitted with or without an STC for auto gas use.
Probable cause
Excessive particulate contamination in the fuel tank, which resulted in the interruption of the fuel flow to the engine and a partial loss of power. The source of the contamination could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA265
- Event ID
- 20150714X75059
- Case number
- ERA15LA265
- 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: 45af5721db37fecdc42b28d135b70b5bef6c50d003ac4225b07370a97c67a3cc; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:32:06.701Z.