DEN05LA150 · Bellanca 7GCBC
Bellanca 7GCBC · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From 2V2 · Longmont, CO to 2V2 · Longmont, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN05LA150
- 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 7GCBC
- 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
- N113AW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2V2 · Longmont, COTo 2V2 · Longmont, CO
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Airframe, component or system 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
- Flt control syst, rudder control cable/rod › Failure, total
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not possible
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight instructor, during the landing roll the student attempted to correct the airplane from drifting to the right by applying left rudder. The rudder input was unresponsive and the airplane continued to drift to the right and departed the runway. The airplane looped to the right and came to rest on the right side of runway, causing substantial damage. Examination of the airplane revealed the left rudder cable failed. Detailed optical examination of the fractured individual wire ends and strands adjacent to the fracture revealed significant wear damage. Examination of the left side of the fuselage at the cable separation point revealed wear marks on the upper, outboard seatback support bar. The seat was removed from the airplane revealing the seat frame had been repaired on the left side. The weld extended the seatback support bar down and aft, preventing it from lining up with the lower seat support bar. This extension entered the travel path of the left rudder cable. An examination of the remaining airplane systems revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
the failure of the left rudder cable resulting in a loss of directional control by the pilot. Contributing to the accident was the improper repair procedures on the seat frame.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN05LA150
- Event ID
- 20051007X01602
- Case number
- DEN05LA150
- 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: 7d3d73f7a744b6a884052fb18b67659c0ad203d95d41e34fc40392d0795679d0; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:19:54.607Z.