CEN16LA217 · Bellanca 17 30 UNDESIGNAT
Bellanca 17 30 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Westport Airport / Keystone Airpark (4F1) to William R. Pogue Municipal Airport (OWP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA217
- 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
- 0
- 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 30 UNDESIGNAT
- 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
- N7346V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Westport Airport / Keystone Airpark (4F1), Westport, OKTo William R. Pogue Municipal Airport (OWP), Sand Springs, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1969)
- 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 · climb to 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 pilot departed with the intention of filling the airplane's fuel tanks at a nearby airport before proceeding to his destination. Shortly after takeoff, the pilot adjusted the engine controls for cruise flight and then noticed a loss of engine power. He initiated emergency procedures by switching from the right main fuel tank to the left main fuel tank, turning on the fuel boost pump, and maneuvering the airplane for a forced landing. During the landing, the airplane contacted trees and then impacted an open field. A postaccident examination of the engine and fuel system revealed that the right main fuel tank was about three-quarters full and the other three fuel tanks were nearly empty. No fuel was present in the line from the fuel manifold to the metering unit or to the engine driven fuel pump. When tested, the boost pump delivered fuel from the right main fuel tank to the main fuel line. Other than the absence of fuel, no anomalies were noted with the engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation and the pilot's mismanagement of the available fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA217
- Event ID
- 20160614X34836
- Case number
- CEN16LA217
- 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: 9a0babb405f344645151f8ca75410ec8d19322eb74e9b686bfc2ca2c556aa90f; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:30:47.271Z.