CEN21LA343 · Stinson JR. SR
Stinson JR. SR · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Dekalb, IL to Wittman Regional Airport (OSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA343
- 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
Stinson JR. SR
- Aircraft type
- Stinson JR SR
- 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
- N81Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dekalb, ILTo Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), Oshkosh, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 88 years (built 1933)
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was in-bound to the destination airport when the engine lost total power. The pilot conducted a forced landing to a muddy field where the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted. Examination of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the empennage. One fuel tank was empty and there was fuel staining on the soil. The pilot reported that the airplane should have had about 15 to 20 gallons of fuel remaining at the time of the accident. In a subsequent conversation, the pilot reported that the airplane had an “odd fuel system” and if the fuel level was low, the engine could experience fuel starvation due to decreased fuel pressure, to which he attributed the loss of engine power on the accident flight.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA343
- Event ID
- 20210730103589
- Case number
- CEN21LA343
- 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: b3a3e541bfcfdb1ee6e00eb18cc8fc253969b7a1de311826965d9371096dd34f; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:21:09.217Z.