CEN19LA202 · Aeronca L16A 7BCM
Aeronca L16A 7BCM · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Zelienople Municipal Airport (PJC) to Zelienople Municipal Airport (PJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA202
- 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
Aeronca L16A 7BCM
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca L16
- 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
- N9325H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Zelienople Municipal Airport (PJC), Zelienople, PATo Zelienople Municipal Airport (PJC), Zelienople, PA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was returning to the airport to practice takeoffs and landings. About 15 minutes into the flight, while flying level at 1,900 ft mean sea level, the engine "abruptly" stopped. The pilot performed a forced landing to a nearby muddy hay field. During the landing roll, the right main landing gear buckled, collapsing the gear rearward and resulting in substantial damage to the right wing and fuselage. Engine control continuity was confirmed, and spark from both magnetos and all spark plugs were noted. A mechanic working on the airplane following the accident reported that a piece of the air filter gasket was lodged in the carburetor intake. It is likely that the obstruction of airflow caused by the gasket resulted in the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to obstruction of the carburetor air intake by a piece of the air filter gasket that had become detached.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA202
- Event ID
- 20190701X50002
- Case number
- CEN19LA202
- 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: 372c81b3fc3271f059a4a08bcf67c546e5841968fc9bc16e5236495d303529a9; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:21:21.260Z.