CEN17LA242 · Bellanca 17 30 A
Bellanca 17 30 A · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Bollinger-Crass Memorial Airport (MO5) to Grove Regional Airport (GMJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA242
- 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 30 A
- 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
- N14728
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bollinger-Crass Memorial Airport (MO5), Van Buren, MOTo Grove Regional Airport (GMJ), Grove, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 43 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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 private pilot and his passenger were landing at the conclusion of a cross-country flight. During the right turn from the base leg to the final leg of the airport traffic pattern, the engine lost partial power. The pilot attempted to restore power by switching from the right fuel tank to the auxiliary fuel tank, but engine power was not restored. The airplane was substantially damaged during the subsequent forced landing to a field.
A postaccident examination revealed that the right fuel tank had at least 5 gallons of fuel remaining, 4 gallons of which were unusable. The left fuel tank contained 5 gallons of fuel, and the auxiliary fuel tank was full, containing 15 gallons of fuel. An examination of the engine and fuel system revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation, and the loss of engine power could not be duplicated during an engine test run. Given the low fuel state of the right wing, it is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of fuel starvation as the fuel unported during the right turn.
Probable cause
An unporting of fuel in the right wing while maneuvering in the airport traffic pattern, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA242
- Event ID
- 20170625X23152
- Case number
- CEN17LA242
- 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: 5a95b252cef8f38284bf31df6fb459d7a4e1818c8135f6a35c40722af8ab8d98; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:27:25.122Z.