ERA26LA105 · Piper J3C 65
Piper J3C 65 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Wadsworth Municipal Airport (3G3) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA105
- 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
- 0
- 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
Piper J3C 65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N5930V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wadsworth Municipal Airport (3G3), Wadsworth, OHTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 82 years (built 1944)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- 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
The pilot of the of the vintage, 65-hp, tailwheel airplane reported that he had been flying for about 20 minutes. He had applied carburetor heat during some of the flight, but not all of the flight. The pilot was performing low altitude passes over a friend’s farm, in cold temperatures (20° F). He had the engine power near idle as he descended towards the farm for a fourth time and did not have the carburetor heat on. About treetop level, as the pilot increased throttle input, he realized that the engine had lost all power. The pilot performed a forced landing into trees, and the airplane came to rest inverted, resulting in substantial damage to both wings and the fuselage. The pilot added that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation and that the accident could have been prevented if he applied carburetor heat for the entire flight. Review of the owner’s manual revealed instructions to always have the carburetor heat control full on during long glides such as an approach for landing, as it would tend to keep the engine warm and reduce the possibility of the engine failing to accelerate when the throttle was open suddenly.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to use carburetor heat during descent in cold temperatures, which resulted in a total loss of engine power at an altitude too low for recovery.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA105
- Event ID
- 20260204202386
- Case number
- ERA26LA105
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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, coordinates, 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: d78fde2c0b34864c169d4ab166afe825d674b579d067150cb02ad0ace69b7fc8; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:43:02.502Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. Misspelled city name; 3G3 is Wadsworth Municipal Airport, Wadsworth, OH.