DEN05LA117 · Bellanca 14-19-3
Bellanca 14-19-3 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN05LA117
- 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
- 1 · 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 14-19-3
- 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
- N8870R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT), Grand Junction, COTo 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
- Fuel starvation; Stall
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot contacted the Air Traffic Control tower at 1201:02, and subsequently was cleared for touch-and-go landings. Over the next 23 minutes, the pilot performed 4 traffic patterns and touch-and-go landings. The pilot had just finished the fourth touch-and-go and was on the departure leg when he reported that the airplane's engine had lost power. A tower controller saw the airplane descend off the end of the runway from approximately 150 feet above the ground. The controller saw the airplane touchdown briefly, rise back into the air, then descend again, disappearing behind a ridge. An examination of the airplane showed the right wing fuel tank intact and void of fuel. The left wing fuel tank was broken open and showed evidence of fuel. An examination of the airplane's engine showed trace evidence of fuel in the distribution manifold. The fuel selector was removed and examined. The selector valve was positioned to the right fuel tank feed position. No other systems anomalies were found with the airplane that could have contributed to the accident. Fuel records showed the airplane was serviced with 29.1 gallons of "AVGAS" on May 29, 2005.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the improper fuel selector position. Factors contributing to the accident were the inadvertent stall, the ravine, and the steep drop off embankment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN05LA117
- Event ID
- 20050801X01122
- Case number
- DEN05LA117
- 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: 32b3e0c780c8a497667eaa369eb855403950ef09ac5435aceecccbd61ee17ffe; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:57:26.554Z.