DEN03LA011 · Bellanca 7KCAB
Bellanca 7KCAB · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL) to Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA011
- 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 7KCAB
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 7
- 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
- N41807
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL), Fort Collins, COTo Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL), Fort Collins, CO
- 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
- Landing · aborted
- 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 control in flight
- 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
- Stall/mush
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed Possible conflict
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was doing touch-and-go landings on runway 15. On this approach, he made a 3-point landing and bounced. He settled the airplane back down for a second 3-point landing, but there was a "lack of directional ground control and some drift to the right of centerline." He added full power for a go-around, but the controls felt "mushy," and there was a "lack of aileron control." The airplane drifted to the right, struck the runway with its right wingtip, and nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both the left and right wing spars, empennage, forward fuselage, both main landing gear attachment points, rudder and left horizontal stabilizer. The winds were, 070 degrees at 07 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing, and his failure to maintain airspeed resulting in a stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA011
- Event ID
- 20021028X05390
- Case number
- DEN03LA011
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-10-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3a844ba31a7444be2744dc365b57ea8eab5efd6ddebee67dd8feee4086bcb5b6; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:35:36.601Z.