CEN14FA024 · Bellanca 14-19-3A
Bellanca 14-19-3A · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Elton Hensley Memorial Airport (FTT) to San Geronimo Airpark (8T8)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14FA024
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Bellanca 14-19-3A
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 14
- 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
- N11RC
- Operator
- William B. Doppelt · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Elton Hensley Memorial Airport (FTT), Fulton, MOTo San Geronimo Airpark (8T8), San Antonio, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1966)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was returning to his home airport. A review of radar data showed the accident airplane in a straight-line descent from cruise flight at a rate of nearly 2,900 ft per minute. The descent resulted in a loss of 8,100 ft in less than 3 minutes until the airplane disappeared from radar in the vicinity of the accident site.
Disassembly of the airplane's cabin heat shroud, which provided heated air to the cabin, revealed evidence of cracks and holes in the muffler wall and exhaust gas penetration into the interior of the shroud. According to the autopsy report, the pilot died as a result of thermal injuries and smoke inhalation, with soot present in the upper airway and 37% carbon monoxide found in his blood postmortem. Based on the lack of soot in the lower airway and the elevated carbon monoxide levels, the majority of the carbon monoxide in the pilot's blood was likely from inhalation during the flight at levels that would have impaired his ability to safely fly the airplane. Although cetirizine, also known as Zyrtec® (used to temporarily relieve allergy symptoms and could cause drowsiness), was also detected in the pilot's urine and blood, the detected level indicated that impairment from the drug was unlikely.
Probable cause
A defective exhaust system that allowed carbon monoxide to enter the cabin and impair the pilot, rendering him unable to control the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14FA024
- Event ID
- 20131028X55737
- Case number
- CEN14FA024
- 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: 40073e5e5b6abcfec579190464605e44efb1f1d854b42487feafe0af6b31638a; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:06:12.127Z.