ERA21LA022 · Champion 7FC
Seaplanes R Fun Champion 7FC · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA022
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Champion 7FC
- Aircraft type
- Champion 7
- 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
- N7532E
- Operator
- Seaplanes R Fun
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1958)
- 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 starvation
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor was providing instruction to the private pilot in the tailwheel equipped vintage airplane. The flight instructor was seated in the rear seat and the private pilot was seated in the front seat. On the downwind leg of the airport traffic pattern, the flight instructor told the private pilot to apply carburetor heat. The carburetor heat knob and fuel selector handle were located near each other, behind the private pilot, who inadvertently moved the fuel selector handle, rather than the carburetor heat knob. The flight instructor moved the fuel selector handle back and took control of the airplane to demonstrate a touch-and-go landing. During subsequent initial climb, about 50 to 100 ft above ground level, the engine lost all power and the flight instructor performed a forced landing into trees, resulting in substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The flight instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane. He added that it was possible that he did not position the fuel selector handle back to the correct position. Subsequent examination of the fuel selector handle by a mechanic revealed that the fuel valve operated normally. Given this information, it is likely that the flight instructor failed to position the fuel selector handle correctly, which subsequently resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The fight instructor’s failure to ensure that the fuel selector handle was in the correct position, which resulted in a total loss of engine power during initial climb due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA022
- Event ID
- 20201016102159
- Case number
- ERA21LA022
- 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: ccc5a08e25d5e2de4a19ca03fe43879eb2febc465990370810038739bead397b; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:15:03.029Z.