LAX97LA009 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during initial climb
From 06U to S67 · Nampa, ID
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA009
- 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
- N28172
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 06UTo S67 · Nampa, ID
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Became lost/disoriented, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › Climb, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed the desert airport toward the south during a dark night with only 16 percent of the moon illuminated. According to the airport data sheet, terrain obstructions are located to the south and west of the airport. The center of town is located less than a mile east of the airport. The pilot said that he began a left turn shortly after takeoff and that was the last thing he could remember. A ground witness and the passenger said that the engine sounded normal. The wreckage examination disclosed that the airplane's left wing dragged the terrain during the left turn.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertent disorientation in dark night time conditions and failure to maintain a proper climbing attitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA009
- Event ID
- 20001208X06919
- Case number
- LAX97LA009
- 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: 96fe58cffc03a028f97f950e6e2342980a4eea55ebe27d6e3743a6e3471d8627; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:24:39.337Z.