DFW05CA021 · Bellanca BL-17-30A
Bellanca BL-17-30A · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Roanoke, TX to Covington Municipal Airport (M04)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05CA021
- 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 BL-17-30A
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca BL-17
- 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
- N28086
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roanoke, TXTo Covington Municipal Airport (M04), Covington, TN
- 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
- 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
- Other person › Maintenance, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 1,531 hour private pilot reported that during takeoff, the single-engine airplane seemed to be performing well; however, approximately 100-200 feet above ground level (agl), the engine started to lose power. The pilot stated that "while the engine did not completely stop, there was not enough power to maintain flight." The pilot then executed a forced landing into a rough and uneven field. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector revealed that the mixture control cable was found disconnected. The cable did not appear to be damaged from the forced landing. The engine was later run with no indication of any mechanical irregularities. The owner of the airplane reported that the airplane had been flown 2 hours since its last 100-hour inspection.
Probable cause
The disconnection of the engine mixture control cable due to improper maintenance which resulted in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05CA021
- Event ID
- 20041130X01890
- Case number
- DFW05CA021
- 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: 65625dc2966e15c7e827a0922529780eeb8d714ee6485c6b20058971f8291094; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:40:49.256Z.