CHI97LA126 · Grumman G-164A
Grumman G-164A · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Bandon State Airport (KS05) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA126
- 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
Grumman G-164A
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G-164
- 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
- N7859
- Operator
- Jerry D. Bantam · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bandon State Airport (KS05)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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had taken off to the north on an aerial application flight with 100 gallons of chemical. The airplane was about 30 feet above the ground when a loss of engine power occurred. The pilot reported 'The engine may have backfired three to four times.' The airplane began to lose altitude. The pilot said he set the mixture to rich, dropped part of the load (chemical) and used the throttle which seemed to help. He decided to land the airplane on a road just north of the airport. As he lined up with the road, he saw a car coming. He then decided to land in an adjacent plowed field. The airplane touched down on three points, 'hit a terrace' which 'tore the engine off,' nosed over, tore the stabilizers off, uprighted, and came to a stop. Examination of the wreckage revealed no anomaly.
Probable cause
an undetermined event, which resulted in loss of engine power. Factors relating to the accident were: an automobile, which prevented the pilot from landing on a road; and a dirt bank (terrace) in the emergency landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA126
- Event ID
- 20001208X07869
- Case number
- CHI97LA126
- 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: 1a68c657375390add72d4b48b9c59c24a759395517698c58f91c14581cab8ee4; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:45:29.073Z.