ERA20LA039 · Rans RANS S7 COURIER Undesignat
Rans RANS S7 COURIER Undesignat · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Jackson County Airport (I18) to Smyrna Airport (MQY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA039
- 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
Rans RANS S7 COURIER Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Rans S7
- 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
- N831RS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jackson County Airport (I18), Ravenswood, WVTo Smyrna Airport (MQY), Smyrna, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 28 years (built 1991)
- 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 · cruise
- 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 power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While en route, about 2 hours into the cross-country flight, the engine lost all power. The pilot primed and restarted it twice; however, the engine would not sustain power. On the third attempt at restarting, the pilot noted that the propeller would not turn over, and he elected to perform a forced landing to a field. During the landing, the airplane struck a fence, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing and engine mounts. Examination of the engine revealed that the oil injection tank was empty, and the aft piston exhibited vertical scoring, consistent with lack of lubrication. It is likely that the aft piston seized in flight as a result of a lack of lubrication, which resulted in the total loss of engine power. Leak testing of the oil system revealed no leakage; therefore, it is likely that the pilot departed on the flight without sufficient oil. Although the pilot should have checked the oil before the flight, the pilot operating handbook, which was written by the builder, contained incorrect oil consumption information, which likely contributed to the pilot's misunderstanding of the amount of oil needed for flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to verify that the engine oil tank contained adequate oil for the cross-country flight, which resulted in a total loss of engine power as a result of lack of lubrication. Contributing to the accident was the incorrect oil consumption information listed in the pilot operating handbook.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA039
- Event ID
- 20191118X02529
- Case number
- ERA20LA039
- 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: edbeecbd7031265584c1d90dc97e939ccfec50d65b687e93506151f54a4dcc89; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:38:09.138Z.