LAX05CA282 · Bellanca 7ECA
Bellanca 7ECA · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05CA282
- 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 7ECA
- 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
- N53893
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, CATo 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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 control in flight
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted a runway sign during an aborted landing after it drifted off the runway centerline during the landing flare. According to the pilot's written statement, he conducted his approach at an idle power setting while performing a slip. At the point of touchdown, the pilot experienced a "sudden and strong side drift to the right." The pilot applied full power to abort the landing and was attempting to correct back to the runway centerline when the airplane's lower fuselage impacted a runway sign. The impact with the sign resulted in the failure of an aileron control rod, and limited airplane control. The pilot diverted to an airport with a larger runway and landed uneventfully. The wind at the accident airport was reported as variable at 5 knots about 30 minutes prior to the landing. Thirty minutes following the event, the wind was reported as a 10-knot headwind with a 10-degree offset to the right from the runway centerline. The pilot reported no previous anomalies with the airplane or engine that would have prevented their normal operations.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during the landing flare, which resulted in a collision with an runway sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05CA282
- Event ID
- 20050928X01544
- Case number
- LAX05CA282
- 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: e99870c4092e39bcce301582579026b230903ed6a31084b659e9b851660dad8e; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:25:34.718Z.