GAA16CA341 · Bellanca 8KCAB
Bountiful Flight Bellanca 8KCAB · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Skypark Airport (BTF) to Skypark Airport (BTF)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA341
- 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 8KCAB
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 8
- 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
- N8SF
- Operator
- Bountiful Flight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Skypark Airport (BTF), Woods Cross, UTTo Skypark Airport (BTF), Woods Cross, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1972)
- 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
- Landing
- 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 on ground
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- 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 flight instructor in the tailwheel-equipped airplane reported that he was demonstrating flight maneuvers to the passenger when the oil filler cowl door unlatched in flight. The flight instructor reported that he feared for their safety, decided to land as soon as possible, and overflew a nearby island airstrip to verify wind direction and identify potential obstacles. During the precautionary landing on the 2,000 foot long by 15 foot wide airstrip, the flight instructor reported that as the airplane slowed and the tailwheel was lowered to the ground, the airplane encountered a wind gust from the left, and the airplane drifted to the right side of the narrow runway. The flight instructor reported that, "it became clear that I could not keep the aircraft on the runway surface, I initiated a go-around." During the aborted landing, the right main landing gear impacted an unknown object, which slowed the airplane's momentum, and the airplane settled to the ground and slid to a stop on the fuselage. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the horizontal stabilizer cables and the right aileron.
Inspection of the oil filler cowl latch was conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration Aviation Safety Inspector assigned to this accident and he found no failure or degradation of the locking mechanism or the latch assembly.
Meteorological conditions reported for the airstrip where the accident occurred, reported that about the time of the accident the wind was out of the north-northeast at 7 knots gusting to 9 knots. The flight instructor was landing to the southeast.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll, resulting in an impact with an unknown object during aborted landing and consequent ground impact.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA341
- Event ID
- 20160628X81445
- Case number
- GAA16CA341
- 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: 4863367fbb0b0a99af6dd128592c8ebf06287a9172e49bc3a9a3743baa5c18f3; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:34:38.672Z.