CEN21LA400 · Luscombe 8A
Luscombe 8A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Venango Regional Airport (FKL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA400
- 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
- N2071K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Venango Regional Airport (FKL), Franklin, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 74 years (built 1947)
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and three other airplanes were conducting a cross-country flight. After refueling, the airplanes taxied to the runway run-up area, and the pilot completed his preflight checklist. Shortly after takeoff, about 200 to 300 ft above ground level, the engine began operating rough, which included some surging, and then lost power. The pilot attempted to land on the opposite runway, which resulted in a landing with a 9- to 12-knot tailwind. Due to the tailwind, the airplane touched down near the end of the runway. Realizing the airplane would not stop before the end of the runway, the pilot turned the airplane to the right and exited the runway surface. The airplane entered a soybean field and nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and vertical stabilizer. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Weather conditions reported at the time of the accident were conducive to serious carburetor icing at glide power. The pilot reported that during the takeoff, the carburetor heat was off. Therefore, it is likely that carburetor ice accumulated during taxi and run-up before the takeoff, which resulted in a loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power after takeoff due to the formation of carburetor ice while on the ground and the pilot’s failure to apply carburetor heat immediately before takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA400
- Event ID
- 20210907103803
- Case number
- CEN21LA400
- 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: ea5c4fe3fbfec36b0ec2844f303fb3aec63704057fa852dfeed784d26033f7dd; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:29:25.179Z.