WPR19LA157 · Vought F4U-7
Vought F4U-7 · Accident during takeoff
From Jerome County Airport (JER) to Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport (RKS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA157
- 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
Vought F4U-7
- Aircraft type
- Vought F4
- 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
- N965CV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jerome County Airport (JER), Jerome, IDTo Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport (RKS), Rock Springs, WY
- Aircraft age
- About 67 years (built 1952)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 power plant
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following an annual inspection, the mechanic who conducted the inspection was unable to conduct a test flight due to weather conditions but did perform several engine runs, during which he adjusted the fuel enrichment setting. The mechanic told the pilot before the accident flight that he would have to lean the engine manually while on the ground instead of using the auto-lean mixture setting, as the engine would run rich.
Before taking off, the pilot placed the mixture in the auto-lean position. The engine sputtered, and the pilot saw black smoke originate from the exhaust. The pilot then manually leaned the engine, and “it cleared up.” The pilot placed the mixture in the auto-rich position, performed a magneto check, then taxied onto the runway, but the engine “loaded up” a second time. The pilot stated that he manually leaned the engine, then moved the mixture to the auto-rich position while he advanced the throttle to 30 inches of manifold pressure. He said that he held this power setting for about 1 minute before initiating the takeoff. As the airplane accelerated past about 100 to 110 knots, the engine “coughed”, and the pilot reduced power to idle and aborted the takeoff but “ran out of runway.” The airplane exited the right side of the runway and impacted a dirt berm and fence before it came to rest upright.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any mechanical malfunction that would have precluded normal operation and production of power, which included no evidence of preignition or detonation within each cylinder. During functional tests of the carburetor, it was found that, at high power settings, the fuel flow was lower than specified limits and would result in a lean fuel/air mixture. However, at lower power settings, the fuel/air mixture was within or slightly higher than specified limits. While it is likely that the lean fuel/air mixture at higher power settings could have resulted in detonation, no signatures were observed to suggest that it occurred.
The pilot stated that he wanted to get the airplane to an airshow and relied on the information provided to him by the mechanic. He reported that, in hindsight, he should have not flown the airplane and had the carburetor removed for overhaul.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to fly the airplane with a known mechanical deficiency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA157
- Event ID
- 20190515X14224
- Case number
- WPR19LA157
- 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, cause areas. 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: b4fed3639af6e5ff66c21f4c4514aec0cc439f2549d5b1057ff7089cfa4a28fd; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:00:28.976Z.