CEN17LA019 · Bellanca 17-31A
Bellanca 17-31A · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Sundance Airpark (HSD) to Ardmore Municipal Airport (ADM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA019
- 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 17-31A
- 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
- N93668
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sundance Airpark (HSD), Tulsa, OKTo Ardmore Municipal Airport (ADM), Ardmore, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1973)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who was the owner of the airplane, had purchased the airplane 3 days before the accident and was conducting a familiarization flight/flight review with a flight instructor. The flight departed and landed at two airports before proceeding to the destination. The flight instructor stated that, during the visual approach to the destination airport, the fuel selector was moved from the right fuel tank to the left fuel tank; at that time, the fuel gauges indicated that the left fuel tank was less than 1/2 full, the right fuel tank was above 1/4 full, and the auxiliary fuel tank was full. After a touch-and-go landing, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power while climbing through 100 ft above ground level and subsequently impacted terrain during the forced landing.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the left and right main fuel tanks contained no usable fuel; the auxiliary tank was about full. The main fuel supply line revealed that only several drops of liquid consistent in odor with aviation fuel was present in the line. The gascolator screen did not contain debris, and the gascolator bowl contained a few drops of liquid consistent with the odor of aviation fuel. The position of the fuel selector could not be determined due to impact damage. Compression and continuity of the engine valve and drive trains was confirmed when the engine was rotated by hand. Given the lack of mechanical anomalies, the lack of usable fuel in either of the main fuel tanks, and the absence of fuel in the main supply line and gascolator, it is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of fuel starvation.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during initial climb due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA019
- Event ID
- 20161018X30518
- Case number
- CEN17LA019
- 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: b2244dca093dd03d0a505f2af6d7e5b1f5abd7635c751929bf348bbdf19d07d2; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:25:14.177Z.