ATL05CA056 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From John C Tune Airport (KJWN) to Bomar Field / Shelbyville Municipal Airport (KSYI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05CA056
- 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 17-30A
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 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
- N4024B
- Operator
- Joseph Trent Kendall
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John C Tune Airport (KJWN), Nashville, TNTo Bomar Field / Shelbyville Municipal Airport (KSYI), Shelbyville, 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
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel starvation; 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, 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 flight was cruising at 3,000 feet approximately 15 nautical miles north of Bomar Field - Shelbyville Municipal Airport, Shelbyville, Tennessee, when the engine sputtered and lost power. The pilot stated he moved the fuel selector from the auxiliary fuel tank to the right main fuel tank, established glide airspeed, and reported the loss of engine power to the Nashville air traffic control tower. The pilot stated he tried to find a road or clearing for landing, but he could not distinguish the terrain in the darkness. The pilot glided the airplane toward a dark area, then turned on the landing light and immediately saw treetops. The airplane collided with the trees and the ground. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunction with the airplane. He stated he had planned to change the selected fuel tank in five or ten minutes, and he had inadvertently allowed the auxiliary tank to run out of fuel before switching to a tank containing fuel. The elevation at the accident site was approximately 830 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's mismanagement of the fuel supply by his failure to switch the fuel selector position , which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05CA056
- Event ID
- 20050401X00389
- Case number
- ATL05CA056
- 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 2005-03-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1b2a1343ffd7e35479dd71e525058e0032b785856647e9b7fdb69f99ac1bf41e; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:04:10.847Z.