LAX03LA202 · Bellanca 8GCBC
Bellanca 8GCBC · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Q12 · Williams, CA to Nut Tree Airport (VCB)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA202
- 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
- N2558Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q12 · Williams, CATo Nut Tree Airport (VCB), Vacaville, CA
- 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 force landed in a rice field after a partial loss of engine power in the takeoff initial climb. The pilot was departing from a private gliderport on a pipeline patrol fight. During the initial climb out, at an altitude about 200 feet agl, the engine started to run very rough. The pilot attempted to return to the airport runway but realized he did not have sufficient altitude to do so. The airplane crash-landed in a swampy rice field located north of the departure end of the runway. During the accident sequence, the landing gear and both wings were torn off the airplane. Following recovery of the airplane, the engine was started and test run while it was still attached to the airframe. No malfunctions or failures were found with the engine or any related airframe system.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power on takeoff for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA202
- Event ID
- 20030618X00900
- Case number
- LAX03LA202
- 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 2003-06-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1cec9b0ed5a2f0d5741ec51133ea9eed1573fe3799c0218f8ca6a581c119c762; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:26:44.437Z.