Colorado Aviation Accidents & Incidents

On June 8, 2017, about 1340 mountain daylight time, a Bellanca 17-30 airplane, N7328V, made an forced landing in a field near Front Range Airport (FTG), Watkins, CO. The commercial rated pilot and passenger sustained serious injuries and the airplane sustained substantial damage. The airplane was registered to and operated by a private individual under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 as a personal flight. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident and no flight plan had been filed. The local flight originated from FTG at an unknown time.

The pilot reported that he and the passenger planned to conduct touch-and-go landings at FTG. He added that the main fuel tanks were full before takeoff and he began the flight with the left fuel tank selected. After performing an unknown number of landings, he reportedly switched from the left to the right fuel tank, while in the traffic pattern. He completed one more touch-and-go landing and the engine experienced a loss of power on the on the upwind leg of the traffic pattern. The engine did not show signs of a problem before the loss of power and the fuel gauge indicated full during the entire flight. He reportedly switched back to the left tank and was unable to restart the engine. During the forced landing the airplane impacted a ditch and came to rest upright (figure 1).



Figure 1 – Accident airplane
The passenger stated to the police that the airplane was at 6,100 ft above mean sea level (700 ft above ground level) when the loss of engine power occurred, and that they "were too low to troubleshoot the problem."

The airplane owner reported that he and his wife flew the accident airplane on June 7, 2017 for about 1 hour, during which time the engine performed normally with no anomalies noted. He reportedly told the pilot that he would need to top off the fuel tanks before the next flight because fuel had not been added after the last 2.5 flight hours. He was unaware of any fuel being added to the tanks after this flight and before the accident flight. There were no fuel receipts discovered during the investigation.

A postaccident examination of the airplane by the responding Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed damage to the airplane's firewall. The fuel selector was positioned to left main fuel tank. The two auxiliary tanks contained fuel to the top of the tanks at the fuel filler port. The right wing was slightly elevated at the accident sight and an undetermined about of fuel was clearly visible from the right main fuel tank filler port. During the recovery process, left main fuel tank was empty and the other 3 fuel tanks contained about 45 gallons of fuel combined.

The airplane owner reported that the pilot had accumulated over two hours of flight time in the accident airplane prior to the accident flight. The owner added that he and the pilot received informal training on the airplane systems and fuel management in February an