ATL05LA018 · Bellanca Citabria 7ECA
Bellanca Citabria 7ECA · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Summerville Airport (DYB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05LA018
- 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
- 2 · 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 Citabria 7ECA
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca Citabria 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
- N57388
- Operator
- Daniel B. Muckenfuss · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Summerville Airport (DYB), Summerville, SCTo 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 · climb to 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
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 pilot performed an engine run-up and then departed from runway 24. The takeoff appeared and sounded to be normal. The airplane reached approximately 400 feet above the ground, beyond the end of the runway and witnesses no longer heard engine noise or saw the propeller turning. The airplane entered a steep left turn toward runway 06 and disappeared below the tree line. Witnesses heard the engine start back up and then heard the airplane collide with the ground. Examination of the accident site revealed the airplane came to rest south of the approach end of runway 06, 40 feet to the left of the taxiway, next to a retention pond. Both wings were detached from the fuselage. The right tank had 4 gallons of fuel and the left tank was full. Continuity of the flight control system was established. The engine was recovered from the accident site and further examination disclosed both magnetos produced a spark through the leads during engine rotation. Engine continuity was confirmed and all four cylinders produced compression. The engine ran for over two minutes at 1750 RPM. The post-accident examination of the airframe and subsystems failed to disclose a mechanical problems or component failure.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05LA018
- Event ID
- 20041110X01796
- Case number
- ATL05LA018
- 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: 6d440e9c65ef7d460b9d3e55e1756d6bf575c1f6f4a55548a38c680d530789b1; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:14:33.933Z.