ERA10LA101 · Bellanca 7GCBC
Biplane Rides Bellanca 7GCBC · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Albert Whitted Airport (SPG) to Albert Whitted Airport (SPG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA101
- 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
- N8634V
- Operator
- Biplane Rides
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albert Whitted Airport (SPG), St. Petersburg, FLTo Albert Whitted Airport (SPG), St. Petersburg, FL
- 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
- 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 engine power (partial)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While returning from a 50-minute banner towing flight, the airplane's engine began losing power. The pilot determined that the airplane would be unable to reach the destination airport and elected to perform a forced landing to a golf course. He decided not to detach the banner the airplane was towing, partly out of concern for persons and property on the ground, and partly so that it could act as a drag device during the subsequent off-airport landing. During the landing, when the pilot maneuvered the airplane to avoid several golfers standing in the airplane's path during rollout, the right wing struck a tree resulting in substantial damage. A brief postaccident test run of the engine showed no evidence of any mechanical abnormalities. Temperature and dewpoint conditions at the time of the accident were favorable to the formation of serious carburetor icing at glide power settings.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA101
- Event ID
- 20091228X95148
- Case number
- ERA10LA101
- 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: 3be3d0b7232c82d75704149973814f16b2d4b8c393fb8191e76910d6e8b259d9; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:35:44.678Z.