CEN11LA381 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Thompson Field (1TA7) to Thompson Field (1TA7)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA381
- 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
- N93650
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Thompson Field (1TA7), Canton, TXTo Thompson Field (1TA7), Canton, 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
- En route · climb to 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 (total)
- 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 power plant
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he performed a normal preflight and run-up of the airplane prior to departure. Shortly after takeoff, the engine’s fuel pressure went to zero. The pilot switched to the right fuel tank and turned on the boost pump but still did not get any fuel pressure. He then turned the airplane back toward the airport and prepared for an engine-out forced landing. During the forced landing in a field, the airplane’s right wing struck the terrain. Fuel was present at the accident site. After the airplane was recovered, the engine-driven fuel pump was removed and examined; no abnormalities were noted, and the pump’s drive coupling was found intact. The rod end bearing connecting the throttle control to the engine’s fuel control was found disconnected. The attaching bolt was damaged, and the nut was not located. Examination of the bolt revealed signatures that were consistent with the bolt and nut being in place at the time of the accident. A reason for the loss of fuel pressure was not found.
Probable cause
The loss of fuel pressure for undetermined reasons, which resulted in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA381
- Event ID
- 20110609X43548
- Case number
- CEN11LA381
- 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. 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: eb84c6f2d0b924b9f15febfd8210efe5d830c2191895cf6fd61b238c883fd3ca; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:15:54.240Z.