CEN18FA235 · Ercoupe 415 D
Ercoupe 415 D · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Monmouth Municipal Airport (C66) to Monmouth Municipal Airport (C66)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18FA235
- 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
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Ercoupe 415 D
- Aircraft type
- Ercoupe 415
- 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
- N94070
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monmouth Municipal Airport (C66), Monmouth, ILTo Monmouth Municipal Airport (C66), Monmouth, IL
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot and a pilot-rated passenger departed on a local flight to complete touch-and-go landings at a nearby airport. The airplane was in the traffic pattern when witnesses reported that the airplane flew very low over their house and that the engine was "sputtering and backfiring." The airplane flew about 30 ft above them, made a steep left bank toward the airport, then impacted the ground in a wooded area. A postimpact fire consumed a majority of the airplane; the propeller exhibited signatures consistent with a lack of engine power at impact.Although impact and thermal damage precluded a detailed examination of the engine and fuel system, examination did not reveal any evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunction or abnormalities that would have led to a loss of engine power. The investigation was unable to determine the cause of the loss of engine power based on the available information.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18FA235
- Event ID
- 20180624X50017
- Case number
- CEN18FA235
- 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: d7f18ea8ee6aacb68be411ddf9ee2a50594ab58c7417fd3e74b114546af26cc0; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:43:02.683Z.