NYC02LA169 · Bellanca 8GCBC
Bellanca 8GCBC · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Skylark Airpark (7B6) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA169
- 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 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
- N86714
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Skylark Airpark (7B6), East Windsor, CTTo 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 · 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Cracked
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At 1,300 feet, while towing a banner, the airplane's engine experienced severe vibrations and a loss of power. The pilot located a field where he could safely drop the banner, and descended to 500 feet to make the drop. After the drop, the airplane would not climb, and the vibrations increased, so the pilot decided to land in the field while he still had control of the airplane. During the approach, the pilot had to clear trees, and "came in a little high and fast." After touching down on a grassy field, he "tapped the toe brakes," and the airplane nosed over. A post-flight examination of the engine revealed that the number 3 cylinder was cracked and its exhaust valve seized. Further examination revealed a continuous fracture around the head, in the vicinity of the fourth and fifth cooling fins, with a surface consistent with fatigue cracking. The cylinder barrel had been remanufactured, then joined to a new cylinder head. Threads 1, 2 and 3 of the cylinder barrel displayed protruding material that matched corresponding thread indentations in the cylinder head. There was no evidence of material defect or dimensional anomaly from manufacturing processes. There was also no evidence as to the specific nature or extent of possible crack initiation forces. According to logbook information, the cylinder was installed in 1999, and had approximately 635 hours of service. Two accident investigations involving similar issues are CHI01FA329 and NYC02FA178.
Probable cause
Fatigue cracking of the number 3 cylinder head. A factor was the presence of protruding material on the cylinder barrel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA169
- Event ID
- 20020823X01453
- Case number
- NYC02LA169
- 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, coordinates. 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: 1336c8564cadf304a2a544ce8e420c4744773ebaf123ade904527cebf2afba88; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:28:55.864Z.