DEN04LA113 · Bellanca 14-19-3A
Bellanca 14-19-3A · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC) to Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (RWL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04LA113
- 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 14-19-3A
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 14
- 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
- N1251R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Broomfield, COTo Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (RWL), Rawlins, WY
- 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he had just leveled off at his initial cruising altitude of 10,500 feet msl when the engine "sputtered a little bit." He enriched the mixture and the engine "ran fine for approximately five seconds, then quit." Despite remedial action, the pilot was unable to restore engine power. He squawked 7700 on the transponder and transmitted a mayday call on the emergency radio frequency, then made a forced landing on a road. During the landing roll, the left wing struck several mail box posts, crushing the outboard portion of the left wing leading edge. The engine was later functionally tested. No anomalies were noted. Pressurizing each wing tank fuel supply line revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power for undetermined reasons resulting in a forced landing. Factors contributing to the accident were the unsuitable terrain for landing and the mailbox posts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04LA113
- Event ID
- 20040805X01150
- Case number
- DEN04LA113
- 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: 43b146e1b69f19e679ff09838288e83a9b46cf7ef7afaece70345342e354abdd; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:56:37.627Z.