ERA16FA084 · Eros 1600
Eros 1600 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Lebanon Municipal Airport (M54) to Lebanon Municipal Airport (M54)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16FA084
- 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
- 1 · 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
Eros 1600
- Aircraft type
- Eros 1600
- 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
- N508AH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lebanon Municipal Airport (M54), Lebanon, TNTo Lebanon Municipal Airport (M54), Lebanon, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2014)
- 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
- 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 power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot conducted a 20-minute local flight in the experimental, amateur-built airplane after installing a new ignition coil on the two-stroke, two-cylinder engine. He then returned to the departure airport, where he landed the airplane, back-taxied on the runway, and initiated a second takeoff. Witnesses reported that, shortly after takeoff, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power. The airplane entered a left turn back toward the runway, then subsequently turned "sharply" left and descended to ground contact.
Examination of the airframe revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Examination of the engine revealed that the front spark plug was burnt white, consistent with exposure to high temperatures or an excessively lean carburetor calibration. Although both front and aft carburetor adaptors exhibited degradation, the front cylinder adaptor exhibited significantly more damage and cracking compared to that of the aft cylinder. This likely resulted in additional air being ingested by the front carburetor, which subsequently resulted in a leaner fuel/air mixture in that cylinder. In addition, the front cylinder piston exhibited a hole about 1 centimeter in diameter, consistent with detonation/preignition. Records located in the pilot's hangar indicated that the pilot was servicing the engine with a fuel/oil ratio of 40:1, rather than the manufacturer-recommended ratio of 50:1.
It is likely that the use of an improper fuel/oil ratio resulted in carbon deposits in the front cylinder. Combined with the effects of the lean fuel/air mixture as a result of the degraded carburetor adaptors, the engine was susceptible to the development of detonation and/or preignition, which subsequently resulted in the development of a hole in the front cylinder piston head. As a result, the engine experienced a total loss of power, to which the pilot responded by attempting to turn back to the airport at low altitude. During the turn, the pilot allowed the airplane's airspeed to decay and exceeded its critical angle of attack, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and collision with terrain.
Probable cause
A failure of the front cylinder piston due to the pilot's improper maintenance, which resulted in a total loss of engine power after takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to return to the runway at low altitude following the loss of engine power, and his failure to maintain adequate airspeed during the turn, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16FA084
- Event ID
- 20160107X93631
- Case number
- ERA16FA084
- 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: 5c4a19d8328407e507617b5962ceb74930b00aa641f2d9dd1ea981946c68957e; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:37:04.240Z.