ANC12FA095 · Bellanca 7GCBC
Bellanca 7GCBC · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Homer-Beluga Lake Seaplane Base (5BL) to Homer, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC12FA095
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Not recorded
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
- N57511
- Operator
- Vonderheide George H
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Homer-Beluga Lake Seaplane Base (5BL), Homer, AKTo Homer, AK
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- 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 airplane's wreckage was located about 10 miles from its departure point in the shallow waters of a river leading to the remote destination lake. At the accident location, the river is crossed by high-tension power lines. The lines were draped across the river from the high terrain on the south side of the river to the low terrain on the north side of the river. One of the power lines had been severed. All of the cables were marked with large orange marking balls, and the power lines are marked on the aeronautical sectional chart for the area.
Postaccident examination of the airframe or engine did not reveal evidence of any preimpact malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane collided with the high-tension power lines and sustained substantial damage during impact with terrain. Marginal visual meteorological conditions prevailed in the area at the time of the accident. It is likely that the pilot did not see the power lines in time to avoid them.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to see and avoid high tension power lines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC12FA095
- Event ID
- 20120831X05957
- Case number
- ANC12FA095
- 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: afd82826230305d6465c51f7373645b23304db0639ec6d41403b957c91325c6f; retrieved 2026-09-17T05:49:10.962Z.