ANC05LA094 · Bellanca 7GCAA
Bellanca 7GCAA · Accident while maneuvering
From Birchwood Airport (PABV) to Girdwood-Alyeska Airport (AQY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC05LA094
- 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 7GCAA
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 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
- N8626V
- Operator
- Matthew L. Gallagher · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Birchwood Airport (PABV), Chugiak, AKTo Girdwood-Alyeska Airport (AQY), Girdwood, AK
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 exhaustion; 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
- Pilot in command › Became lost/disoriented
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial certificated pilot departed on a Title 14, CFR Part 91 personal flight in an area of coastal shoreline and glaciers in a wheel-equipped airplane that did not have any navigational equipment, other than a magnetic compass. The pilot said that during the flight, the compass became erratic and was not providing accurate information. The pilot indicated that he attempted to find his location, but was unable to accurately fix his position. He made several radio calls on a variety of frequencies, and finally made radio contact with an FAA flight service station as he was circling over a beach under about a 500 foot ceiling. He reported that he was lost, and the airplane had minimum fuel. A Coast Guard helicopter was dispatched to the area and located the airplane about 17 miles from an airport. The two aircraft flew toward the airport, but the airplane's engine quit when the fuel supply was exhausted. The pilot made an emergency landing in a partial clearing that contained small trees, and the airplane received structural damage to the wings and fuselage.
Probable cause
The pilot's becoming lost/disoriented while maneuvering due to inadequate in-flight planning/decision making, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and a forced landing in tree-covered terrain. A factor contributing to the accident was fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC05LA094
- Event ID
- 20050718X01048
- Case number
- ANC05LA094
- 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 2005-07-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 96b9f2f51d28aae91f5d23dbe08c8c5e5bc3c0908af57b42cbccfd4c776d95c0; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:41:08.988Z.