IAD96LA087 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From 8W2 to Hummel Field (W75)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA087
- 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 17-30A
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 17
- 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
- N14765
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 8W2To Hummel Field (W75), HUMMEL, VA
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Exhaust system, manifold/pipe › Failure
- Ignition system, magneto grounding lead (p-lead) › Melted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot smelled electrical smoke in the cockpit shortly after takeoff and turned back the departure airport. Shortly after they turned back, the engine lost power, and the pilot made a forced landing in a field. Examination of the aircraft revealed that the left exhaust tailpipe had separated from the muffler and that the insulation around the electrical wire bundle which passed through the firewall was melted. The wire bundle supplied power to the cockpit instruments and ignition system which included the ground leads for the magnetos. The pilot stated that he believed that the hot exhaust melted the insulation from the electrical wire bundle, the ground leads to the magnetos shorted, resulting in the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power as a result of the failure of the left exhaust tailpipe and led to a shorted ignition system. A related factor was the unsuitable terrain in which the aircraft landed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA087
- Event ID
- 20001208X05799
- Case number
- IAD96LA087
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-05-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a962dddee78550eaf4f221a6fa90a3cb2ca5c6076196fbaf22a79e2b4db63109; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:48:06.184Z.