WPR23LA346 · Aeronca 11AC
Aeronca 11AC · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Sky Meadows Airpark (WN92) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA346
- 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
Aeronca 11AC
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 11
- 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
- N46WR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sky Meadows Airpark (WN92), Spokane, WATo not recorded
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported they were on a local flight and, while attempting to balance the fuel load, move the fuel selector valve from the “left” main tank position to the “right” position, the airplane subsequently lost engine power. The pilot was not able to restart the engine and performed a precautionary landing onto a road. Shortly after touchdown, the airplane veered off the road and into a ditch. The wings and engine truss sustained substantial damage. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that fuel was present in the fuel tanks and that the fuel selector valve positions available were WING TANKS (9 o’clock position), MAIN TANK (12 o’clock position), and OFF (3 o’clock position). The pilot reported that he moved the fuel selector valve from the “left” tank, which was actually the WING TANKS position, to the “right” tank, which was actually the OFF position.
Probable cause
Fuel starvation due to the pilot’s incorrect movement of the fuel selector valve to OFF, which resulted in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA346
- Event ID
- 20230918193090
- Case number
- WPR23LA346
- 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: 85383b9b8b38355c3695f86e402faca11e12854c7dddc5c13af05f24c6432858; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:08:02.056Z.