CEN17LA058 · Bellanca 17 30A
Bellanca 17 30A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Range Regional Airport (HIB) to Flying Cloud Airport (FCM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA058
- 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 30A
- 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
- N4204B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Range Regional Airport (HIB), Hibbing, MNTo Flying Cloud Airport (FCM), Minneapolis, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 42 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
- En route · 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After dropping off two passengers on an extremely cold morning, the commercial pilot departed for the return flight home. During cruise flight at 2,500 ft mean sea level, the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot restarted the engine; shortly thereafter, the engine lost power a second time. The pilot executed a forced landing onto a road, during which the left wing was damaged.
An engine teardown revealed significant heat distress to the crankshaft No. 4 connecting rod journal, as well as the Nos. 3 and 4 connecting rod bearings. The heat distress resulted in fracture of the Nos. 3 and 4 connecting rod caps and subsequent seizure of the engine. The Nos. 1, 2, 5, and 6 connecting rod bearings exhibited overlay fatigue, dirt embedment and corrosion, consistent with inadequate oil lubrication. A review of the engine maintenance logbooks revealed a history of oil changes at inconsistent intervals, which included much longer intervals than those recommended by the manufacturer; however, the effect of the inconsistent maintenance could not be determined based on the available information.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to a lack of crankshaft lubrication to the No. 4 connecting rod journal.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA058
- Event ID
- 20161220X20645
- Case number
- CEN17LA058
- 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: 5b81ef2a606584c097f9769dc6b95da310f154278f10d0420e7022a8225d0223; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:54:22.837Z.