ERA12LA349 · BELCHER, Gerald C BEL AIRE 2000
BELCHER, Gerald C BEL AIRE 2000 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Clyde, NY (no airport) to Finger Lakes Regional Airport (0G7)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA349
- 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
BELCHER, Gerald C BEL AIRE 2000
- Aircraft type
- Belcher Gerald BEL AIRE 2000
- 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
- N122BA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clyde, NY (no airport)To Finger Lakes Regional Airport (0G7), Seneca Falls, NY
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the preflight inspection of the experimental amateur-built airplane, which had not been flown for nearly 1 year, the pilot drained the existing automotive fuel from the tank and replaced it with fresh fuel. After noting no anomalies during a ground run of the automotive-type engine, the pilot departed and circled above the departure field for several minutes to confirm that the engine would continue to perform normally before he departed the area. Several minutes later, the engine began to "hesitate," and, in response, the pilot "pumped" the throttle, which seemed to keep the engine partially running but with insufficient power to keep the airplane airborne. The pilot subsequently performed a forced landing to a farm field, during which the airplane incurred substantial damage to both lower wings. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical failures of the engine; however, a sample of fuel taken from the airplane’s fuel tank contained an unidentified particulate contaminant; however, it could not be determined whether this affected the engine performance. No other anomalies of the fuel system were noted.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined during the postaccident investigation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA349
- Event ID
- 20120521X05217
- Case number
- ERA12LA349
- 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: a77c4d9e39ec1ebbe3c19a0b16a5c71f9cfa63daeee4eef5d21e83c997f1ee01; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:12:04.456Z.