ERA18FA149 · Taylorcraft BC12 D
Taylorcraft BC12 D · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Commerce, GA to Commerce, GA
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18FA149
- 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
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
- N94909
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Commerce, GATo Commerce, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 72 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
- 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 (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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot departed on a visual flight rules local flight. A witness saw the pilot conduct a preflight inspection of the accident airplane and depart on a 10-minute flight. When the airplane returned to the airstrip to land, the witness heard the engine rpm "going up and down." After the airplane landed, the pilot began taxiing toward the hangar but then taxied back to the runway for another takeoff. The witness stated that the airplane reached an altitude between about 50 and 75 ft above the runway with the engine sputtering. At that time, the airplane seemed to slow and was just above the trees when the right wing and then the nose dropped, which was followed by an impact with trees.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The weather conditions near the accident site at the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of serious carburetor icing at descent engine power settings. Given that these conditions existed, and that the witness reported the engine rpm may have been fluctuating during the airplane's previous landing approach, it is likely that carburetor ice accumulated during the prior descent and possibly the taxi period that followed prior to the accident takeoff. The undetected partial loss of power during the accident takeoff ultimately led to an aerodynamic stall from which the pilot was unable to recover.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to effectively mitigate an accumulation of carburetor ice, which resulted in an undetected partial loss of engine power and an aerodynamic stall during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18FA149
- Event ID
- 20180521X11944
- Case number
- ERA18FA149
- 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, coordinates. 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: 242ac8662eb4bc07c396caeaf569383eb141b7af6ba4a9efdaa4fe3ff45eef3d; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:40:56.716Z.