ERA24LA122 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: fuel starvation en route
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA122
- 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 17-30A
- 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
- N282SV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 26 years (built 1998)
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/owner of the airplane reported that the purpose of the flight was to ensure that recent maintenance performed on the airplane was satisfactory. According to the pilot and maintenance log entries, the left magneto and harness was replaced with an electronic magneto and new harness, the engine mounts were replaced, the engine-driven fuel pump was replaced with an overhauled unit, and the engine fuel hoses “firewall forward” were replaced. The pilot stated that he replaced the fuel lines. About five minutes after takeoff on the accident flight, the engine lost total power at an altitude of 1,500 ft mean sea level (msl). The pilot was unable to restore engine power and elected to land in a residential neighborhood; however, during the approach, the airplane contacted powerlines before it touched down in the grass of a divided highway and skidded into the roadway. A test run of the engine was performed following the accident. Initially, the engine would not start, and a significant fuel leak was found at the fuel line from the throttle body to the fuel manifold. The fuel line was found to be less than finger tight, and when secured, the engine started immediately and operated at various power settings without anomalies. Based on this information, it is likely that, following this replacement of the fuel hoses, the pilot failed to properly secure the fuel line from the throttle body to the fuel manifold, which resulted in a fuel leak, fuel starvation, and the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilot’s failure to properly secure a fuel supply line.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA122
- Event ID
- 20240226193843
- Case number
- ERA24LA122
- 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: d9cb3616eb158abcef0ff672fb092b4a715fb1a4342121ee123ed3cdf14d52d1; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:32:31.183Z.