LAX88LA053 · Bellanca 8GCBC
Air Ads Bellanca 8GCBC · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX88LA053
- 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 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
- N53917
- Operator
- Air Ads
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM), San Diego, CATo 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
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Engine assembly › Undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AS THE PLT WAS COMPLETING A BANNER TOWING OPN, HE APPLIED PWR TO CLIMB FROM 500' TO 1500' TO RETURN TO THE ARPT. AS HE ADVANCED THE THROTTLE, THE ENG BEGAN RUNNING ROUGH, THEN LOST PWR. HE SAID THE COCKPIT FILLED WITH SMOKE & HE RELEASED THE BANNER. HE STEERED THE ACFT AWAY FROM SURFERS & DITCHED IT IN ROUGH WATER. THE ACFT & ENG WERE BADLY DAMAGED BY THE HVY SURF & SALT WATER. THE ENG WAS EVENTUALLY RECOVERED, EXAMINED & TORN DOWN. NO DISCREPANCIES WERE FOUND, EXCEPT THE ENG DRIVEN OIL PUMP HOUSING & IMPELLERS SHOWED SIGNS OF FOREIGN OBJECT DAMAGE. A WITNESS HAD TAKEN A PHOTO OF THE THE ACFT BEFORE IT WAS DITCHED. THE PHOTO SHOWED A HVY TRAIL OF SMOKE (BELIEVED TO BE FROM OIL) COMING FROM THE ACFT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX88LA053
- Event ID
- 20001213X32563
- Case number
- LAX88LA053
- 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: 86827912945d0b6388f17ccadbfcaadd074fe775f3efc02b7a5c3b44191a197f; retrieved 2026-09-22T00:41:04.405Z.