BFO86FA027 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From College Park Airport (CGS) to Lee Airport (ANP)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO86FA027
- 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
- 3 · 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
- N14781
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From College Park Airport (CGS), College Park, MDTo Lee Airport (ANP), Annapolis, MD
- 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
- 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; Stall; 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AIRCRAFT'S ENGINE SPUTTERED AND QUIT WHILE THE AIRCRAFT WAS CLIMBING THROUGH 400 FEET AFTER DEPARTURE. IN AN ATTEMPT TO TURN BACK TO THE RUNWAY THE PILOT STALLED THE AIRCRAFT AND IT DESCENDED OUT OF CONTROL CRASHING INTO TREES AND THE GROUND. POST CRASH INVESTIGATION REVEALED THE PRESENCE OF UNCONTAMINATED WATER IN THE NUMBER 6 CYLINDER FUEL INJECTOR NOZZLE. EXAMINATION OF DRAIN PLUGS IN THE LEFT WING FUEL TANKS AND FUEL SELECTOR VALVE REVEALED THE PLUGS TO BE RUSTED AND DIFFICULT TO REMOVE. THE AIRCRAFT SAT FROM AUGUST 1985 TO FEBRUARY 1986, OUTSIDE, WITH ONLY HALF FULL FUEL TANKS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO86FA027
- Event ID
- 20001213X33485
- Case number
- BFO86FA027
- 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: f38cbe04a9aadd95720a75b7e41131003374af07d8012d65db4adfd8cb0b584c; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:33:34.555Z.