ERA15LA358 · Bellanca 7KCAB
Obx Airplanes Bellanca 7KCAB · Accident during initial climb
From Dare County Regional Airport (MQI) to Dare County Regional Airport (MQI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA358
- 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 7KCAB
- 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
- N86705
- Operator
- Obx Airplanes
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dare County Regional Airport (MQI), Manteo, NCTo Dare County Regional Airport (MQI), Manteo, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 41 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 systems
- 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 commercial pilot was conducting a banner-tow operation. A witness reported that, after the airplane departed, the pilot threw the grapple hook out the window and that the hook then "whipped" down and then up and that the cable then became lodged between the right elevator and horizontal stabilizer. The pilot then picked up the banner, and, as the load imparted to the cable by the banner increased, the cable pulled taught until the grappling hook cable became lodged between the right horizontal stabilizer and elevator. The pilot reported that the elevator then became stuck in the nose-down position, which resulted in her inability to further control the airplane's pitch. The airplane then descended and impacted water left of the runway.
A postaccident examination of the airplane confirmed that the banner-tow cable had become lodged between the right horizontal stabilizer and elevator. When the cable was removed, control continuity to the flight control surfaces was confirmed.
Probable cause
The inadvertent lodging of the banner-tow cable between the right elevator and horizontal stabilizer after the pilot threw the grapple hook out the window, which resulted in the loss of pitch control and the airplane’s subsequent impact with water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA358
- Event ID
- 20150915X12259
- Case number
- ERA15LA358
- 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: 63afae6218fb3761bc53924a5a3d2fb4ff14cb14f94f00d054f42eac48b4fb13; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:46:34.891Z.