ERA17LA020 · Taylorcraft BC12 D
Taylorcraft BC12 D · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during takeoff
From Brook Bridge Aerodrome (8GA9) to Brook Bridge Aerodrome (8GA9)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA020
- 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
Taylorcraft BC12 D
- Aircraft type
- Taylorcraft BC12
- 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
- N94919
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brook Bridge Aerodrome (8GA9), Vaughn, GATo Brook Bridge Aerodrome (8GA9), Vaughn, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 70 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
- 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 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 flight instructor reported that he was going to perform several touch-and-go landings with a student pilot before departing for a long cross-country flight. After taxiing up and down the runway a few times, he performed an engine run-up with no anomalies noted. During takeoff, when the airplane was about 30 ft above ground level, the engine started to lose power and then seconds later lost total power. The flight instructor tried to land the airplane on the runway but landed hard. The left main landing gear separated, and the left gear contacted the runway and fractured the main spar. Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The weather conditions were conductive to the accumulation of serious carburetor ice at glide power settings; however, the loss of engine power occurred during a full power setting. The investigation could not determine if carburetor ice accumulated during the prior ground operation. Thus, the reason for the total loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any evidence of preimpact malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA020
- Event ID
- 20161019X85330
- Case number
- ERA17LA020
- 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: 049eb5fba2795764aac9b5adba96347f0731d7a1d07b38928802cb10176f4d0b; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:44:49.018Z.