ANC00LA001 · Bellanca 7GCBC
Bellanca 7GCBC · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Lake Hood Airport (Z41) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00LA001
- 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 7GCBC
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 7
- 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
- N4156Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Hood Airport (Z41)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
- 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
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Contamination, water
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated private pilot, with one passenger aboard, was departing from the Lake Hood Airstrip. As the airplane climbed to about 100 feet above the runway, all engine power was lost. The airplane landed in an area of tundra-covered marsh, just off the end of the departure runway. During the landing roll, the airplane's main wheels contacted the soft, boggy terrain, and the airplane nosed over. A postaccident inspection of the airplane's carburetor revealed about 10cc of rusty-colored fluid, along with clean fuel in the airplane's carburetor float bowl. The rusty-colored fluid tested positive for water, when tested with water detection paste. The fluid sample was released to the accident pilot at his request. The accident pilot reported that the fluid contained therapeutic levels of fluoride, commonly found in tap water. The pilot did not submit the test results report to the NTSB.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection to remove all contaminated fuel from the fuel system. A factor associated with the accident was an unsuitable terrain condition for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00LA001
- Event ID
- 20001212X19894
- Case number
- ANC00LA001
- 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: 344e1ed2c2e1a3a660348bec7a1ea3baaa0aca19448f2034210eea49d8bf02ff; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:57:45.659Z.