NYC01LA044 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Chicago Rockford International Airport (RFD) to Zanesville Municipal Airport (ZZV)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA044
- 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
- N8268R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago Rockford International Airport (RFD), Rockford, ILTo Zanesville Municipal Airport (ZZV)
- 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 · descent
- 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 starvation
- 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 › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was ferrying the airplane with the landing gear locked down. During the descent for landing, with the right auxiliary fuel tank selected, the engine lost power. The pilot switched tanks and pumped the throttle, but was unable to get the engine started, and landed off airport in a field. Examination revealed the right auxiliary fuel tank, the fuel lines to the fuel control unit, and the fuel injection manifold were absent of fuel. Useable fuel was found in the other three fuel tanks. When the auxiliary fuel pump was turned on, fuel flowed to the fuel control unit. The flight manual stated that the auxiliary fuel tanks were for use in level flight only, and if a fuel tank was run dry, you needed to switch to a tank with fuel and turn on the auxiliary fuel pump to low. The pilot reported that he was aware of the procedure to turn on the auxiliary fuel pump, but after he changed fuel tanks, he had to focus his attention on flying the airplane and to the immanent forced landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow the restart procedures published in the approved flight manual(AFM). Factors were his failure to follow the fuel management procedures published in the AFM, which resulted in fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA044
- Event ID
- 20001220X45460
- Case number
- NYC01LA044
- 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: 7015da3e3b9f603d44464c4a32dce83f9f56faca94f776e85573f4be6148e449; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:18:33.109Z.