WPR14CA070 · Bellanca 7ECA
Amelia Reid Aviation Bellanca 7ECA · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV) to Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14CA070
- 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 7ECA
- 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
- N53893
- Operator
- Amelia Reid Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, CATo Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certified flight instructor (CFI) and student pilot planned to conduct an instructional flight in the tandem-seat, tailwheel-equipped airplane. The student pilot had a total flight experience of 20 hours, all of which was in the accident airplane make and model. He had not soloed yet. The reported wind was calm with 10 miles visibility. The student pilot was seated in the front seat of the tandem-seat airplane, and began the takeoff roll, his first for that day. The takeoff roll was described by the CFI as "a little wiggly," but was in accordance with the CFI's experience and expectations for a student pilot in a tailwheel airplane. Just after liftoff, the airplane drifted off the right side of the 75-foot-wide runway. The CFI did not take over the controls, since he did not perceive any immediate hazards. He then felt the airplane "hit something." He took over the controls, landed the airplane on the remaining runway, and the airplane was taxied to a parking spot. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the fabric on the aft bottom fuselage was torn, and some of the fuselage structural tubing members were bent or broken. Additional examination revealed that an airport taxiway sign was damaged, and that debris from the sign was scattered on the runway. Witness marks indicated that the airplane had struck the top of that sign. The CFI reported that he never saw the sign during the veeroff, due to his rear-seat location. There were no reports by either pilot of a preimpact mechanical malfunction or failure with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to correct for the student pilot's loss of aircraft control in a timely manner during takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the instructor's inability to see the taxiway sign from the rear seat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14CA070
- Event ID
- 20131215X02030
- Case number
- WPR14CA070
- 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: d0ae1ea970486bb3d0d010af17dbf088c45998a7564e91fe605a206b1bbe969a; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:11:14.888Z.