ANC16CA073 · Bellanca 7GCBC
Bellanca 7GCBC · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Soldotna Airport (SXQ) to Soldotna, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC16CA073
- 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 7GCBC
- 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
- N5507K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Soldotna Airport (SXQ), Soldotna, AKTo Soldotna, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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 pilot reported that, while on a personal cross-country flight and approaching his destination airstrip, smoke in the cockpit and oil on the windscreen limited his forward visibility. He said that, while landing, he inadvertently touched down about 15 yards short of the site. The right wing struck a stand of brush, which pivoted the airplane to the right, and the left wing subsequently struck the ground.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left-wing spar and fuselage.
After the accident, the pilot would not disclose to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) or the Alaska State Troopers where the airplane was located. Thus, neither the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) nor NTSB could examine the airplane after the accident.
The airplane was eventually recovered to Soldotna, Alaska, where an FAA airworthiness aviation safety inspector from the Anchorage Flight Standards District Office examined it. The FAA inspector reported that the accident pilot had since sold the airplane on an "as is where is" basis. The new owner reported that there were no mechanical problems with the airplane except for the damage sustained in the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain an adequate glidepath during landing, which resulted in an unintended touchdown before the chosen landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC16CA073
- Event ID
- 20161011X45846
- Case number
- ANC16CA073
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2016-09-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8bb2aa28f7546eb99796119e17038d7d5d8ee3a3c21a9a1fcf211fc847488859; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:22:43.573Z.