CEN23LA322 · Ercoupe 415-D
Ercoupe 415-D · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From The Eastern Iowa Airport (KCID) to Wittman Regional Airport (KOSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA322
- 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-D
- 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
- N415JC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From The Eastern Iowa Airport (KCID), Cedar Rapids, IATo Wittman Regional Airport (KOSH), Oshkosh, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 77 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 · cruise
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a cross-country flight, the engine rpm dropped and the engine lost power. The pilot attempted to restore engine power without success. The pilot established that the engine was likely starved of fuel and elected to perform a forced landing into a marsh. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, empennage, and both wings. The pilot stated that they departed with about 28 gallons of fuel on board. After the airplane was fueled, the line technician placed the vented fuel cap on backwards. The pilot elected to continue the flight to the destination and address the misinstallation upon arrival. After the accident all of the fuel tanks were empty; however, law enforcement reported that an unknown quantity of fuel had leaked from the left fuel tank. A postaccident examination confirmed that the vented fuel cap was on backwards on the outboard fuel tank. An examination of the remaining fuel system and the engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operations. The lack of venting from the misinstalled fuel cap likely precluded fuel from flowing from that fuel tank, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to take off without correcting a misinstalled fuel cap, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation caused by improper venting of the fuel system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA322
- Event ID
- 20230725192706
- Case number
- CEN23LA322
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2023-07-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 818ecf215dd71aae81094108a99e398be27854cc5db196d06eb7dc0328d5af90; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:54:18.880Z.