ERA24LA112 · Bellanca 17-30 A
Bellanca 17-30 A · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Pottstown Municipal Airport (N47) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA112
- 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 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
- N39818
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pottstown Municipal Airport (N47), Pottstown, PATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 52 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
- Landing
- 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 control on ground
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the approach to runway 29, the airplane was stable, and that the touchdown was “smooth”. The pilot described that the airplane handled as expected in flight and during the approach and that there was a wind from 010 degrees at 8 knots. After touchdown, as he lowered the nosewheel, the airplane made an uncontrolled turn to the left which he attempted to correct with full right rudder and right brake. The airplane struck a runway light before departing the runway and coming to rest in a ditch. The wings and fuselage were substantially damaged. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preexisting mechanical defects with the rudder system controls or the nosewheel steering system. The nosewheel landing gear upper leg, lower drag strut, and right-hand lower steering rod were displaced and exhibited fractures consistent with overload as a result of impact damage. Based on this information, it is most likely that the pilot’s inadequate compensation for the prevailing crosswind from the right resulted in a loss of control during landing and the subsequent runway excursion.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control of the airplane while landing with a crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA112
- Event ID
- 20240212193777
- Case number
- ERA24LA112
- 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: 8902ea05ebd5441364700e39d5b53fe0d66f426daf03cadb56c7741f8f691fd5; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:30:01.387Z.