CEN20LA170 · Ercoupe 415 C
Ercoupe 415 C · Accident: fuel related en route
From Garner Field (UVA) to Eagle Lake Airport (ELA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA170
- 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
Ercoupe 415 C
- Aircraft type
- Ercoupe 415
- 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
- N2275H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Garner Field (UVA), Uvalde, TXTo Eagle Lake Airport (ELA), Eagle Lake, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 74 years (built 1946)
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was making a cross-country flight and reported that, about 1 hour into the flight, the engine began to “rattle” and “vibrate.” The engine lost power but remained running with about 1,000 RPMs. The pilot recognized that the airplane could not maintain altitude and executed a forced landing in a field. Upon landing, the airplane nosed over and sustained substantial damage to the forward underside of the fuselage. No mechanical anomalies were found with the engine.
The cockpit fuel selector was found in the left fuel tank position. Contaminated fuel was found in the left-wing tank. The source of the fuel contamination could not be determined.
The carburetor was heavily soiled. Murky fuel and sediment were present in the gascolator sediment bowl. The airplane was operating in conditions that were conducive to serious carburetor icing at descent power. However, the carburetor heat knob in the cockpit was not engaged. The combination of contaminated fuel and possible carburetor icing likely resulted in the partial loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power due to contaminated fuel and carburetor ice.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA170
- Event ID
- 20200502X72403
- Case number
- CEN20LA170
- 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: e92bc6632904f659ee5319b6bf18eb839dccb472c1e516727f37e4ccb15fccac; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:32:43.050Z.