FTW02LA022 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Smiley Johnson Municipal Airport Bass Field (E34) to Hale County Airport (PVW)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA022
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- N614CJ
- Operator
- David L. Williams · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Smiley Johnson Municipal Airport Bass Field (E34), Clarendon, TXTo Hale County Airport (PVW), Plainview, TX
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane departed for a night cross-country flight, and while climbing through 500 feet agl, the pilot heard a popping sound, which was followed by a complete loss of engine power. The pilot turned on the fuel boost pump and attempted to restart the engine; however, he was not successful. The pilot stated that when the engine lost power the fuel selector was in the right tank position. A forced landing was then executed to an area of rough terrain south of the departure airport. The aircraft came to rest upright in a ravine. Examination of the airplane revealed the left fuel tank was empty, the right fuel tank was full, and the fuselage (header) tank contained 7 gallons of fuel. The fuel selector was found selected to the right tank position. The engine was examined and test run, and no anomalies were noted that would preclude operation of the engine. The reason for the loss of engine power was not determined.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. Contributing factors to the accident were the dark night light conditions and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA022
- Event ID
- 20011105X02190
- Case number
- FTW02LA022
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-10-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2ae508a02bdd4c52ec140aa03ab15562499f961210fa63ad983e75e6e82aa451; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:28:54.526Z.