CHI08CA247 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Virgil I Grissom Municipal Airport (BFR) to Waukegan National Airport (UGN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08CA247
- 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 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
- N1289R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Virgil I Grissom Municipal Airport (BFR), Bedford, INTo Waukegan National Airport (UGN), Waukegan, IL
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated he made a normal landing, touching down on the centerline, just past the runway threshold. He stated that he applied the toe brakes to turn off onto a taxiway and discovered there was no pressure on the right brake. The pilot stated he released the brakes as the airplane began to veer off the left side of the runway. Construction was taking place on the airport taxiways and the pilot applied hard left brake to avoid hitting a construction worker and construction equipment. The airplane turned left contacting a taxiway light and an 8-inch high concrete pillar with 3-foot high pieces of steel rebar sticking up from it. The pilot stated the brakes functioned properly prior to the accident landing. Post accident inspection of the airplane revealed there was no pressure in the right brake master cylinder. The last annual inspection of the airplane was November 6, 2006.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain directional control of the airplane following a failure of the right brake.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08CA247
- Event ID
- 20080903X01370
- Case number
- CHI08CA247
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 699fc8a0583f903e51bd94daa4327ca93416933e3f8b336e2be17e7c676aa670; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:08:47.994Z.