IAD96LA070 · Bellanca BL17-31ATC
Bellanca BL17-31ATC · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From 5G9 · Lambertville, MI to USE
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA070
- 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 BL17-31ATC
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca BL17
- 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
- N2CW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 5G9 · Lambertville, MITo USE
- 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
- 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 in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot recalled that the airplane was on a normal approach to the runway, then he woke up in the hospital. He stated that he had no recollection of the accident. The passenger reported that she remembered seeing a red light on the instrument panel just before the accident. The airport manager, a CFI, reported that he witnessed the accident from another airplane in the traffic pattern. He stated that the aircraft appeared to be approaching the runway too fast, and it seemed to him that the pilot '...got behind the power curve.' He said the airplane banked several times from left to right and then the nose pitched up. The airplane appeared to stall, then nosed down, and impacted the ground on the left side of the runway. The airport manager landed and helped the two occupants out of the accident airplane. Moments later, an oxygen bottle exploded, and the airplane burst into flames. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the aircraft which resulted in an inadvertent stall while on short final approach to land.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA070
- Event ID
- 20001208X05785
- Case number
- IAD96LA070
- 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: dc81b335f22a4b39ded2a208596cca7f6082ea0f33b596229cdb75ef6e87a58a; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:46:51.378Z.