MIA00LA248 · Bellanca 8KCAB
Bellanca 8KCAB · Accident: hard landing
From Ruckel Airport (FL17) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA248
- 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 8KCAB
- 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
- N57648
- Operator
- Charles Clayton Burkhart
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ruckel Airport (FL17)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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Stall
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Glider/tow release, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that while climbing after banner pickup, the aircraft began a strange vibration and aileron control seemed sloppy. He turned back to the airport and planned to drop the banner if the problems cleared up. The problems continued and he did not drop the banner. As he approached the runway he applied full engine power in an attempt float in until the banner settled. The float did not occur and the aircraft landed hard. Postcrash examination of the aircraft by an FAA inspector and wreckage recovery personnel showed no evidence of precrash failure or malfunction of the aircraft flight controls, structure, or engine.
Probable cause
The pilots failure to drop the advertising banner prior to a precautionary landing resulting in the aircraft stalling and landing hard. Contributing to the accident was the pilots failure to maintain airspeed during climb after banner pickup resulting in the aircraft entered the early stages of a stall, and the pilots failure to recognize the early stages of a stall and initiate recovery.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA248
- Event ID
- 20001212X21808
- Case number
- MIA00LA248
- 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: 37d68dd1ef564315c78a6ea1252aad84bc19e01dce52befcba7fe39f25623ac4; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:06:25.369Z.