ATL97FA072 · Bellanca 14-13
Bellanca 14-13 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From 4A0 to GA (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL97FA072
- 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 14-13
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 14
- 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
- N86734
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4A0To GA (private airstrip)
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and his pilot rated passenger were flying an errand between two local airstrips. A go-around was made after a visual approach to the destination strip. While maneuvering in the landing pattern, the engine sputtered and quit. A forced landing was being made to an empty field, when the airplane struck trees short of the field. The airplane impacted in a steep left wing down attitude, resulting in fatal injuries to the pilot in the left seat and serious injuries to his passenger in the right seat. During a postaccident examination of the engine, the spark plugs were found heavily sooted, indicating a rich mixture. The temperature and dew point were reported to be 61 and 37 degrees. According to icing probability chart(s), conditions were conducive to carburetor icing. Following the accident, the engine was operated at a low power setting without altering the engine's accessories.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper use of carburetor heat, which led to loss of engine power due to carburetor ice. Factors related to the accident were: carburetor icing (weather) conditions, and trees in the emergency landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL97FA072
- Event ID
- 20001208X07847
- Case number
- ATL97FA072
- 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: c51331e13a8cd8c558cfc271a025d5a92672f9a385d4df3835194a9c30712862; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:58:14.474Z.