CEN15LA313 · Luscombe 8E E
Luscombe 8E E · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Perry Municipal Airport (KF22) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA313
- 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 8E E
- 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
- N2789K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Perry Municipal Airport (KF22), Perry, OKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 68 years (built 1947)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 control on ground
- 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
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 85-year old pilot was on his third flight of the day. After boarding the airplane, he reported sitting in the airplane for a "lengthy" period of time waiting for an engine start by hand-propping the airplane. He recalled adding full power for takeoff and then "everything went black." He was unable to recall any further details of the event. A witness reported about 400-500 feet from takeoff the airplane veered off the runway, crossed an open area, a closed diagonal runway, a taxiway and ran into a drainage ditch. The witness stated it did not appear the pilot made any control inputs after applying full power. The heat index was 105° F. Based on the information and the extreme heat, it is likely that the pilot blacked out due to heat exhaustion.
Probable cause
The pilot's incapacitation and subsequent loss of airplane control due to heat exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA313
- Event ID
- 20150723X30553
- Case number
- CEN15LA313
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-07-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 55f10b5359b3ad8fa80945dd43a0a6d26283169a01122231d2404a47163cbc4c; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:33:55.926Z.