SEA96FA133 · Bellanca 8KCAB
Bellanca 8KCAB · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Pasco, WA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96FA133
- 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
- 1 · 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 8KCAB
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 8
- 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
- N57514
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pasco, WATo 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
- Maneuvering · turn to reverse direction
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses observed the aircraft overfly the pilot's east-west turf landing strip traveling westbound at an estimated height of 50 feet above the runway in straight and level flight. The witnesses reported having seen the pilot arrive and overfly his airstrip in a similar fashion on previous occasions. The closest witness reported observing the aircraft 'passing the east end of the runway' and entering 'a steep climb' and then banking 'to the left in a steep diving turn' after which 'it leveled out and began a climb after a 270 degree turn.' The witness also reported that 'the only difference (he) noticed between this occasion and the many times (he) had seen this plane land in the past was the turn seemed to be tighter.' The aircraft impacted 25 degree upsloping terrain approximately 50 feet below the rim level at which his airstrip was situated. One propeller blade displayed 'S' bending deformation while the opposing blade displayed tip curl.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate clearance with the surrounding terrain while maneuvering to land. A factor was the rising terrain conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96FA133
- Event ID
- 20001208X06098
- Case number
- SEA96FA133
- 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 1996-06-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9d0a4f4b6b9d5f98cfb659af568f4ecd1cd385bd335b0137b677082804dc6aa9; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:19:21.424Z.