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LAX96LA176 · Bellanca 7KCAB

23 Apr 1996 · Tucson, AZ, United States

Bellanca 7KCAB · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing

From 40E · CA to E14

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Event

NTSB case
LAX96LA176
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 7KCAB

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
N333JS
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From 40E · CATo E14
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
Landing · landing roll
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
Loss of control on ground/water
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

  • Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
  • Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot entered the downwind leg of the traffic pattern and noted that the windsock was indicating calm winds. He completed the normal rectangular traffic pattern with no indications of the wind conditions changing. During touchdown a gust of wind from the west raised the right wing, allowing the airplane to drift left. The pilot unsuccessfully attempted to correct the drift and then attempted a go-around. The pilot aborted the go-around when he saw a back hoe in his path. The airplane's left wing then collided with the back hoe, which was parked unattended about 20 to 30 feet from the runway's edge. After the accident, the winds were noted to shift periodically with gusts above 15 miles per hour.

Probable cause

failure of the pilot to adequately compensate for gusting crosswind conditions and to maintain directional control. A factor in the accident was unattended construction equipment parked in close proximity to the runway edge.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record LAX96LA176
Event ID
20001208X05620
Case number
LAX96LA176
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: cdd56f991abf9a4add857b459285084c912097855ec007985845f4a1b25c311b; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:36:06.342Z.