ERA18LA177 · Crawford RV-7 A
Crawford RV-7 A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Peachtree City Falcon Field (FFC) to Thomas C Russell Field (ALX)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA177
- 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
Crawford RV-7 A
- Aircraft type
- Crawford RV-7
- 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
- N19MM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Peachtree City Falcon Field (FFC), Atlanta, GATo Thomas C Russell Field (ALX), Alexander City, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2017)
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s); Wire
- 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 airline transport pilot reported that the accident flight was the first flight in the airplane since he thought the condition inspection was completed. He found out after the accident that the mechanic had not completed the condition inspection nor signed off the maintenance logbook. The mechanic reported that he still had several questions that needed to be answered.
The pilot stated that he took off for the personal, cross-country flight and then flew the airplane for 45 minutes. He added that, when the airplane reached 2,000 ft above ground level and he reduced the throttle, the engine “popped” twice and then lost all power. He looked at the fuel gauges, verified that sufficient fuel was onboard, and switched the selector valve to the other tank. The pilot did not believe that the airplane could glide to the runway at the destination airport, so he chose to land the airplane in a field. During the approach, the airplane impacted tree tops and power lines and then terrain. A postcrash fire ensued, which consumed most of the cockpit and forward portion of the airframe.
Examination of the engine, which exhibited fire damage but was intact, revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA177
- Event ID
- 20180625X03533
- Case number
- ERA18LA177
- 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: e887f4a9dd342e3fd1bf3c4a92c0a70652c344659221f2babe7604a16689a4e7; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:38:53.416Z.