CEN14FA219 · Bellanca 17 30A A
Bellanca 17 30A A · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Shreveport Regional Airport (SHV) to Avenger Field (SWW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14FA219
- 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 17 30A A
- 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
- N9759E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shreveport Regional Airport (SHV), Shreveport, LATo Avenger Field (SWW), Sweetwater, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Approach
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 pilot departed on a cross-country flight, making one stop to drop off one of two passengers. During the stop, the pilot reported topping off all three fuel tanks; he then departed on the accident flight. He stated that the airplane could fly 4 hours 45 minutes with fuel in reserve. However, on the day of the accident, 30mph headwinds were present. After flying for 3 hours 12 minutes primarily using the right fuel tanks, the engine lost full power about 2 miles from the destination airport. The pilot switched the fuel selector valve to the left tank and attempted to restart the engine but did not use the fuel boost pump as called for in the airplane flight manual. The airplane subsequently impacted trees and terrain short of the airport. The pilot was wearing a seat belt and shoulder harness and sustained minor injuries. The passenger had a shoulder harness available, but was seated in a reclined position with only the lap belt fastened during the accident sequence. She sustained fatal injuries during the impact.
Examination of the wreckage revealed the engine was not producing power at impact. The fuel tanks were ruptured during impact and only a small amount of fuel was found in the tanks; however, no evidence of fuel spillage or fuel blighting to surrounding vegetation was present. Thus, the amount of fuel present at the time of the accident could not be determined. Based on the pilot's statements and on-scene evidence, the pilot did not adequately manage the airplane fuel, which resulted in a total loss of engine power. Although the airplane's range was greater than that flown on the day of the accident, the headwinds would have significantly shortened the range, which, when combined with the lack of fuel on-scene, would support fuel exhaustion. However, the pilot did not use the fuel boost pump to assist with restarting the engine, as called for in the airplane flight manual, which would support fuel starvation. Thus, the loss of engine power was due to either fuel exhaustion or starvation, which could not be determined because the fuel tanks were breached.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate inflight fuel management, which led to a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion or starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14FA219
- Event ID
- 20140428X04747
- Case number
- CEN14FA219
- 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: 4e3ffcc573f4adf566d12445356d5c2700f3ccc8c0c784a13d79c58df63e4d2b; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:13:53.794Z.