WPR21LA149 · Luscombe 8A
Luscombe 8A · Accident: ground handling event before flight
From William R Fairchild International Airport (CLM) to Auburn Municipal Airport (S50)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA149
- 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
Luscombe 8A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N28461
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William R Fairchild International Airport (CLM), Port Angeles, WATo Auburn Municipal Airport (S50), Auburn, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 81 years (built 1940)
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Ground handling event
- 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 handling/service
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, after refueling his airplane, that was chocked, with the parking brake set, he attempted to hand prop the engine. After the engine started and while he was walking around the back of the airplane, the engine’s rpm began to increase, and the airplane began to pivot about 90° on the left wheel. When the airplane bypassed the wheel chock, it then rolled towards a fuel station. Shortly thereafter, the airplane impacted the fuel station, which resulted in substantial damage to the right-wing strut.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate engine hand propping procedure which resulted in the airplane’s unexpected movement and subsequent impact with a fueling station.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA149
- Event ID
- 20210329102830
- Case number
- WPR21LA149
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 42daaba9a4e7a388d71e636eca128838e49d3f63955d279355593ff37a1d61e1; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:53:39.851Z.