NYC06CA218 · Bellanca 7GCAA
Obrien Aviation Bellanca 7GCAA · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From BLM · Farmingdale, NC to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC06CA218
- 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
- N5501A
- Operator
- Obrien Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From BLM · Farmingdale, NCTo 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
- 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
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, annual inspection, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a banner pick-up, about 400 feet agl, the elevator cable separated. The airplane then pitched down and impacted a field. Examination of the airplane revealed rust and corrosion on an approximate 2-foot section of the failed elevator cable. The rust and corrosion were consistent with exposure to moisture over a period of time. Review of aircraft maintenance records revealed that the last annual inspection was completed about 10 months prior to the accident. The airplane had accumulated about 5,172 total hours of operation at the last annual inspection, and about 120 hours of operation since the inspection. The maintenance records noted that the cables were lubricated, but there was no record of rust or corrosion being detected.
Probable cause
An inadequate annual inspection of the airplane, which resulted in a total failure of the elevator cable during flight, and subsequent uncontrolled descent into terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC06CA218
- Event ID
- 20061006X01476
- Case number
- NYC06CA218
- 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: acc546155719150f13abba353d3f57fc7842da93bac12668ca9cf617aaeb7ff5; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:28:14.116Z.