WPR21LA315 · Bellanca 14-19-3
Bellanca 14-19-3 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA315
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 14-19-3
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 14
- 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
- N1257R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1966)
- 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
- 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 pilot reported that, at the request of the airplane owner, he was going to reposition the airplane to another airport for an annual inspection. As a precaution, the pilot wanted to fly around the airport traffic pattern to refamiliarize himself with the airplane. The pilot reported that when he arrived at the hangar, the owner stated that the airplane was “ready to go” and that 25 gallons of fuel had been added to the right fuel tank. They departed for a flight around the pattern and were on the crosswind leg when the engine lost power; he adjusted the throttle, mixture, and engaged the boost pump, and the engine started. They continued with the landing sequence, and on the base leg, the engine lost power again. The pilot did not believe the airplane was going to make the runway and elected to land straight ahead in a grassy field. During the landing roll out, the airplane impacted a dirt berm and slid sideways before it came to rest upright. After they exited the airplane, the pilot checked the right fuel tank and noted it was empty. The airplane was inspected at the accident site by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector, and it was determined that the right fuel tank was empty, and the left fuel tank was nearly full. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to accomplish a preflight inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA315
- Event ID
- 20210812103692
- Case number
- WPR21LA315
- 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, cause areas. 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: 02a1b63954eba37f1140967101db8f90ed371afc9406e9725fd1960730c9c708; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:24:47.335Z.