CHI99LA048 · Bellanca 8GCBC
Bellanca 8GCBC · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Fulton County Airport (RCR) to Fox River Airport (96C)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA048
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N395AC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fulton County Airport (RCR), Rochester, INTo Fox River Airport (96C), WI
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, improper use of
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he was in a visual descent to land when the airplane's engine lost most of its power. The pilot applied carburetor heat, but the engine lost more power. The pilot elected to perform an emergency landing on a lake. The pilot said that the lake was not long enough to stop the airplane before coming in contact with the shore. Examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies. Weather conditions reported at Kenosha, Wisconsin, 14 miles east-southeast of the accident site were overcast ceiling of 200 feet, 1 mile visibility, temperature 52 degrees Fahrenheit, and dew point 52 degrees Fahrenheit. According to the Department of Transportation/Federal Aviation Administration/CT-82/44 Publication: Light Aircraft Piston Engine Carburetor Ice Detector/Warning Device Sensitivity/ Effectiveness, June 1982, Carburetor Icing Probability Chart; these conditions places the probability for carburetor icing in the 'serious icing at cruise power' area of the chart.
Probable cause
Carburetor ice, the pilot's inadequate pre-flight planning/preparation resulting in his flight into poor weather conditions, and the pilot's improper use of carburetor heat. Factors contributing to this accident were the carburetor icing conditions, the rising embankment at the shoreline and the trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA048
- Event ID
- 20001211X11525
- Case number
- CHI99LA048
- 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: 68c5942d7aa23c2fae91a7c6ecf49253646e055a77a0d98e91532d39e37486ee; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:12:30.171Z.