CEN24LA152 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Pearland Regional Airport (KLVJ) to Scholes International At Galveston Airport (KGLS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA152
- 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
- N9996V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pearland Regional Airport (KLVJ), Pearland, TXTo Scholes International At Galveston Airport (KGLS), Galveston, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 53 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
- 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
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while in cruise flight he briefly had smoke in the cockpit. The smoke dissipated and after being cleared to land, the engine quit suddenly, and the propeller stopped rotating. He alerted the tower and immediately retracted the landing gear and flaps and established best glide airspeed. When landing was assured, he lowered the landing gear, but the right main landing gear did not extend. The right wing struck a runway light and was substantially damaged.
Post-accident examination by the mechanic who worked on the airplane a few days prior to the accident revealed that the safety wire he cut while performing a gasket replacement on the oil filter adapter had not been removed and replaced. It is likely that because the cut safety wire was not replaced and secured when the filter adapter gasket was replaced, the filter became loose during engine operation which allowed for engine oil to leak out resulting in the subsequent loss of engine power due to oil starvation.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s failure to properly secure the oil filter adapter when replacing the oil filter adapter gasket which resulted in the filter becoming loose, resulting in the loss of engine oil, and the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA152
- Event ID
- 20240409194058
- Case number
- CEN24LA152
- 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, coordinates. 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: cec810833bb8d6be298d01469c24f94171e6b1d6bf810d90ed74f08e035c4342; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:39:26.715Z.