LAX96LA273 · Bellanca 8GCBC
Red Baron Aerial Advertising Bellanca 8GCBC · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Whiteman Airport (WHP) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA273
- 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 8GCBC
- 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
- N87107
- Operator
- Red Baron Aerial Advertising
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiteman Airport (WHP)To 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
- Approach · VFR pattern turn to base
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The CFI had the airplane refueled in preparation for his student's BFR. The CFI and the student (a private pilot) departed, climbed to traffic pattern altitude, and entered the downwind leg. Abeam the control tower, the private pilot was issued a landing clearance and the pilot turned onto the base leg while the airplane descended. The CFI reported that when he instructed his student to decrease the descent rate, he realized that engine power was suddenly unavailable. The CFI took the controls, made a forced landing in a residential area, and collided with obstacles. The postimpact examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal evidence of fuel system contamination or blockages. The engine was successfully test run.
Probable cause
a total loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA273
- Event ID
- 20001208X06286
- Case number
- LAX96LA273
- 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 1996-07-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 830ebcbafa82ecf15bad160117a1e67720a2e2084c7d0b57ca11ce41e1be8b59; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:37:48.578Z.