DFW08CA023 · Bellanca 7GCBC
Bellanca 7GCBC · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Scholes International At Galveston Airport (GLS) to Houston Southwest Airport (AXH)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08CA023
- 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
- N712j
- Operator
- Texas Taildraggers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scholes International At Galveston Airport (GLS), Galveston, TXTo Houston Southwest Airport (AXH), Arcola, TX
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot lost control of the tailwheel-equipped airplane when he encountered a gust of wind from the right while attempting to land on Runway 27. Before the tailwheel contacted the ground, the tail moved left from the gust of wind causing the airplane to turn into the wind. The pilot was unable to compensate for gust of wind and lost control of the airplane. An attempt to execute a go-around was unsuccessful, and the airplane drifted off the 100-foot wide asphalt runway. The airplane contacted standing water in a nearby ditch, nosed over, and came to rest in the inverted position. The pilot reported the winds were from 290 degrees at 9 knots, gusting to 12 knots. The pilot reported having accumulated a total of 14-hours in the same make and model airplane.
Probable cause
The loss of control as result of the pilot's failure to compensate for existing wind conditions while landing. A contributing factor was the gusty crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08CA023
- Event ID
- 20071217X01940
- Case number
- DFW08CA023
- 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: 9ba38ee5971fbe96d08e2b9282a0ecf54f1f42af5d4fe74b1dda8f1d71d197d9; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:17:45.920Z.