ERA20LA194 · Bellanca 8KCAB
Bellanca 8KCAB · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD) to Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA194
- 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
- 0
- 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 8KCAB
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 8
- 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
- N68555
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD), Gadsden, ALTo Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD), Gadsden, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1972)
- 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 (partial)
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, during the flight back to the departure airport after practicing aerobatic maneuvers, the engine started to "cut off and on." The pilot decided to make an emergency landing in a field. The airplane impacted trees, and the landing gear and both wings were buckled. The wreckage examination found that both fuel tanks were breached and absent of fuel. The airplane was recovered from the accident site, and an engine test run was conducted. Prior to the test run, all fuel lines leading to the fuel pumps and fuel servo were examined. The mechanical and electrical fuel pumps were checked, and no anomalies were noted. An external fuel tank was plumbed to the mechanical pump for the test run. The fuel-injected engine was started and run for 2 to 3 minutes at various rpms, and no anomalies were noted.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA194
- Event ID
- 20200521X12903
- Case number
- ERA20LA194
- 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 2020-05-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 71bf0363a1a9153b05a3db2a98470d97d547d00d7924b0cc6e0dce620a8288ae; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:40:13.111Z.