WPR11CA329 · Bellanca 7KCAB
Bellanca 7KCAB · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Siskiyou County Airport (KSIY) to Salem-Willamette Valley Airport/McNary Field (KSLE)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11CA329
- 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 7KCAB
- 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
- N16TP
- Operator
- Gorman Shane e
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Siskiyou County Airport (KSIY), Siskiyou County, CATo Salem-Willamette Valley Airport/McNary Field (KSLE), Salem Airport, OR
- 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
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 reported that after flying for approximately 1.7 hours, the airplane's engine started to run rough. He contacted the nearest air traffic control tower and reported the problem while trying to turn back to an airport he had just passed. After making a 180-degree turn, the airplane's engine lost power and the pilot, who was unsure he could make it back to the airport without unduly endangering people on the ground, opted to land in an empty field. The landing was uneventful; however, during the landing roll the airplane encountered a divot in the ground and nosed over. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the fuel filler cap on the right wing was missing and there were several blue stain streaks aft of the filler port to the trailing edge of the wing. The fuel filler cap was located in the run up area where the pilot had last refilled the airplane's fuel tank. Further examination of the fuel system found it to be intact with just 3 tablespoons of fuel in the fuel sump and no fuel in the main fuel lines to the fuel injector.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection and failure to ensure the fuel cap was secured after refueling, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11CA329
- Event ID
- 20110714X93054
- Case number
- WPR11CA329
- 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: 87ef6d2bf00ac733d02076d46649c7450ac840356e4fe686f1d9140d5774334d; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:27:25.264Z.