CEN26LA091 · Bellanca 17-30A
Bellanca 17-30A · Accident: loss of control on ground while standing
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA091
- 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
- N8213R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 54 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
In preparation for the personal flight, the pilot started the airplane to warm the engine. He then set the airplane’s parking brake and exited the airplane to load baggage while the engine was operating at idle. He asked the passenger, who was not a pilot, to board the airplane while the baggage was being loaded and to pull the mixture control if anything should happen. The pilot then went into the fixed base operator to get his debit card and to use the bathroom. Within two minutes, he heard the engine sound increase, and the airplane taxi into an unoccupied vehicle that was parked about 75 yards away. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the outboard section of right wing. The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot stated that the accident could have been prevented by never placing an unattended non-pilot passenger in parked operating airplane and would be scheduling remedial pilot training with a flight instructor.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper judgement to relinquish his pilot responsibilities to the passenger with the engine operating, which resulted in a loss of airplane control and impact with a parked vehicle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA091
- Event ID
- 20260115202303
- Case number
- CEN26LA091
- 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: 085d04b6486a3dcebefddb1ed1e8131701f31a1a76c9c8719fcd2e3a450b0e74; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:40:38.063Z.