WPR17LA122 · Luscombe 8A A
Luscombe 8A A · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Rexburg Madison County Airport (RXE) to Rexburg Madison County Airport (RXE)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17LA122
- 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 A
- 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
- N1627K
- Operator
- Melendez Robert
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rexburg Madison County Airport (RXE), Rexberg, IDTo Rexburg Madison County Airport (RXE), Rexberg, ID
- Aircraft age
- About 71 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 pattern base
- 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 (partial)
- 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 pilot was returning from a local flight when, on final approach for landing, he applied throttle with no response from the engine. The airplane landed in a field short of the runway, colliding with bushes and a fence before coming to rest in a river. After removal from the river, the airplane was subsequently flipped over by gusty winds and remained inverted for 5 days before the postaccident examination, which revealed no fuel in the wing tanks or gascolator. The amount of fuel onboard the airplane at the time of the accident and whether fuel drained from the airplane during the time it was inverted could not be determined. No other anomalies were observed that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. Based on the available information, the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information which resulted in a landing short of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17LA122
- Event ID
- 20170604X43302
- Case number
- WPR17LA122
- 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: 63578279571cb65aa8d9c5fbe89232a05685710c6d1b4abd5d24640eb0547228; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:21:57.047Z.