MIA00LA199 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Southwest Georgia Regional Airport (ABY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA199
- 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
- N8787V
- Operator
- Warren B. Willis · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southwest Georgia Regional Airport (ABY)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
- 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
- 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
- Dual student › Checklist, not followed
- Fuel system, electric boost pump › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While climbing after takeoff the dual student who was flying the airplane switched fuel tanks. The engine quit. No fuel pressure or fuel flow was showing on the gauges. Attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful and when the field that was chosen for a forced landing could not be reached, the airplane crashed into trees. Postcrash of the aircraft by an FAA inspector showed the engine fuel system did not contain any fuel. The electric fuel boost pump switch had a wire loose which prevented the pump from operating in the on position. A fuel tank had been run dry on the previous flight. The flight manual states that in the event a fuel tank has been run dry and is refueled with the selector off or on another tank position it is possible to have air in the lines. This should be eliminated by running up the engine on the noted tank before takeoff.
Probable cause
The dual student's failure to purge the fuel lines of air after a fuel tank was run dry on the previous flight and the failure of the electric fuel boost pump on or low position due to a loose wire which resulted in failure of the engine due to air in the lines and collision with trees during a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA199
- Event ID
- 20001212X21296
- Case number
- MIA00LA199
- 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: df141deaa01aca9a66016835c0ececf57efb64103c8cc5c5667702f186a047f0; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:36:24.714Z.