DFW07FA039 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Mid America Industrial Airport (H71) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07FA039
- 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
- 3 · 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 17-30A
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 17
- 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
- N39858
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid America Industrial Airport (H71), Pryor, OKTo 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 · 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
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The un-licensed pilot and three passengers were on a local flight at night in a 300-hoursepower high performance airplane when the engine lost power. The pilot elected to extend the airplane's landing gear and perform an emergency landing to a lake. Upon water impact, the airplane nosed over and came to a rest partially submerged in an inverted position. The pilot exited the airplane unassisted and the three passengers remained onboard and subsequently drowned. At the accident site a local law enforcement officer detected a "strong" smell of alcohol on the pilot's breath and that his speech was slurred. When asked if he had been drinking the pilot replied that he had consumed two margaritas several hours earlier. Five bottles of liquor were found in the airplane, with four of the five bottles found to be open. The pilot was forced to submit to a blood draw about five hours and forty minutes after the accident and was arrested on anticipated charges of three counts of first degree manslaughter. Toxicological testing on blood samples from the pilot tested negative for blood alcohol. The pilot did not hold, nor had ever held a pilot or medical/student pilot certificate. Despite repeated attempts by the IIC, the pilot declined to submit a completed Pilot Operator Aircraft Accident Report Form (NTSB Form 6120.1). The pilot also declined to submit his pilot logbook for examination. It could not be determined how much flight time the pilot had accrued; however, the pilot reported to local law enforcement officers that he had not logged a flight in the previous five months. FAA records revealed the pilot purchased the airplane approximately nine months prior to the accident. The previous owner, a certificated flight instructor (CFI), reported that he had instructed the pilot in the airplane for approximately 10-hours. An examination of the airplane was performed. No pre impact anomalies were noted. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons and the pilot's improper decision to extend the landing gear for the water landing. Contributing factors were the prevailing night conditions and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07FA039
- Event ID
- 20061220X01821
- Case number
- DFW07FA039
- 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 2006-12-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 494b724e02741849519880d067ffca638ba5a9421a4098d1b3b0b40c7ff560b3; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:57:41.905Z.