ERA17LA282 · Bellanca 7ACA
Bellanca 7ACA · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during takeoff
From Daphne, AL (private airstrip) to H L Sonny Callahan Airport (CQF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA282
- 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 7ACA
- 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
- N9176L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daphne, AL (private airstrip)To H L Sonny Callahan Airport (CQF), Fairhope, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1971)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot stated that he had already completed several landings and had just taken off and started a left crosswind turn about 500 ft above ground level when the engine lost total power. He immediately lowered the nose of the airplane, checked the fuel selector position, and applied carburetor heat. The engine restarted, and the pilot began a climb; however, the engine stopped running again, restarted, and then quit a third time. By this time, the pilot-rated passenger had taken control of the airplane and performed a forced landing to a field, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and right wing. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that adequate fuel remained in both fuel tanks, and a test run of the engine showed that it ran through its entire power band without interruption. The examination did not reveal any evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Although the weather conditions were conducive to the formation of carburetor ice at cruise/glide engine power settings, the airplane was operating at a high power setting; thus, it is unlikely that ice formed in the carburetor during takeoff.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination and a test run of the engine did not reveal any evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA282
- Event ID
- 20170819X81140
- Case number
- ERA17LA282
- 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: 35b16ae3569da8522e96dca047b498b5d8bd13baa6a304fd51481c82e63feff7; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:43:07.995Z.