CEN13LA132 · Bellanca 17-30A
Ram Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Mc Alester Regional Airport (MLC) to Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (GTU)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA132
- 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
- N222EG
- Operator
- Ram
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mc Alester Regional Airport (MLC), McAlester, OKTo Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (GTU), Georgetown, 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 · 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane experienced a total loss of engine power about 17 minutes into the cross-country flight. The pilot stated that he performed a forced landing into a small field and that the nose and left main landing gear collapsed during the landing roll. An on-site examination revealed that the left wing fuel tank and fuselage-auxiliary fuel tank were full of fuel but that the right wing fuel tank was empty. The empty right wing fuel tank appeared to be undamaged, and no evidence of a fuel leak was found. The cockpit fuel gauges confirmed the observed fuel load distribution. The fuel tank selector valve was found in the right wing fuel tank position. The lack of usable fuel in the undamaged right wing tank and the fuel tank selector valve's position indicate that the loss of engine power was likely due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA132
- Event ID
- 20130114X34552
- Case number
- CEN13LA132
- 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: 398967465761abb8b3288216e3e503ee85172c8ad938f01473c94c67aef1664a; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:44:43.829Z.