CHI96LA055 · Bellanca 7ECA
Bellanca 7ECA · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during takeoff
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA055
- 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
Bellanca 7ECA
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 7
- 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
- N990WY
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Object › Utility pole
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Throttle/power control, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was making a touch-and-go from his home strip. He planned his pattern so as to touch down fast to practice a two-wheel touch-and-go. The airplane touched down halfway down the strip. When the pilot applied power for takeoff, the engine did not respond. The pilot described the engine's sound as being 'like someone putting a hand over the carburetor. It (the engine) was going, but not picking up any rpm.' The pilot advanced the throttle, retarded it and then advanced it again. Because the airplane was now two-thirds of the way down the runway, the pilot continued the takeoff. The pilot's private strip has a powerline which crosses over the strip 175 feet prior to the end. As the airplane went under the powerline, the engine responded with full power, and the airplane's left wing struck a utility pole which supports the powerline along the side of the strip. The airplane struck two trees and a wood fence before it nosed over in a ditch along the side of a road. Examination of the wreckage disclosed flight control continuity and no mechanical anomalies in the engine and engine controls.
Probable cause
the improper application of the throttle by the pilot resulting in a delayed engine response, and the improper decision by the pilot to make a long fast touchdown requiring the need to take off under powerlines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA055
- Event ID
- 20001207X04977
- Case number
- CHI96LA055
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 68f800baa389f9836b93602e9ef64939164a8184da9dcc235073181fcd5d9d87; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:57:16.461Z.