CEN18LA370 · Cubcrafters CC11-160
Cubcrafters CC11-160 · Accident: fuel related en route
From The Duchy Airport (5NC5) to Fairfield County Airport (LHQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA370
- 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
Cubcrafters CC11-160
- Aircraft type
- Cubcrafters CC11
- 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
- N71BN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From The Duchy Airport (5NC5), Chapel Hill, NCTo Fairfield County Airport (LHQ), Lancaster, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2009)
- 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
- Fuel related
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while descending from cruise flight to traffic pattern altitude, the airplane's engine began to run rough. He applied carburetor heat which made the roughness worse and when he then turned off carburetor heat, the engine lost all power. The pilot executed a forced landing to a farm field where the airplane nosed over in the high vegetation.
According to a carburetor icing probability chart, the temperature and dew point were in the range of susceptibility for serious carburetor icing at descent power settings. The pilot's report of the accident listed no mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane, and a recommendation to apply carburetor heat earlier at the beginning of the descent.
Based on the information available the airplane's engine likely lost power due to accumulation of carburetor ice due to the delayed application of carburetor heat.
Probable cause
The delayed application of carburetor heat by the pilot which led to accumulation of carburetor ice, eventual loss of engine power, and the subsequent forced landing in high vegetation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA370
- Event ID
- 20180905X73852
- Case number
- CEN18LA370
- 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: ccea8e388c925fd87db1bed48a6a165f8191ffbc8ad9f61b42d3827af71ccfcc; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:12:39.318Z.