WPR19LA076 · Whittman 8-W Modified
Whittman 8-W Modified · Accident: fuel exhaustion during initial climb
From Prospect State Airport (64S) to Prospect State Airport (64S)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA076
- 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
Whittman 8-W Modified
- Aircraft type
- Whittman 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
- N12037
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Prospect State Airport (64S), Prospect, ORTo Prospect State Airport (64S), Prospect, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1964)
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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)
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- 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 non-certificated pilot was observed by airport personnel as he assembled the airplane over a three-day period. On the day of the accident, during the takeoff, the airplane collided with a runway light then departed the airport area. A search was initiated when the pilot did not return in a reasonable amount of time. The wreckage and the pilot were located the next morning about 1.8 nautical miles southwest of the departure airport in an area of thick trees and brush covered terrain. The pilot related to the airport caretaker that; the engine lost power due to “magneto problems.” The airplane was substantially damaged during landing. A postaccident examination of the magnetos revealed no anomalies with either magneto that would have precluded normal operation. Additionally, the fuel tank was found undamaged and empty at the accident site and there was no odor of fuel or evidence of pooling fuel from possible fuel leaks. The pilot’s reported loss of engine power was attributed to fuel exhaustion due to his failure to ensure that sufficient fuel was available for the flight prior to departure.
Probable cause
The non-certificated pilot’s failure to ensure adequate fuel onboard prior to flight, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA076
- Event ID
- 20190129X04200
- Case number
- WPR19LA076
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2019-01-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1c89510dc7989c21ecdbdb2ebb432766b1d157ad055b398258e75b89703b4912; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:34:01.598Z.