LAX99LA094 · Beech F33
Beech F33 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR) to Palm Springs International Airport (PSP)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA094
- 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
Beech F33
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 33
- 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
- N8253C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR), Goodyear, AZTo Palm Springs International Airport (PSP), Palm Springs, CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was in cruise flight at 8,500 feet mean sea level (msl) when the engine began to run rough. He verified the engine power controls were in their normal positions. Then the engine quit, and he noted the fuel pressure was reading zero. He turned on the auxiliary fuel pump and tried the restart procedure. Fuel pressure was still zero and the engine was wind milling at 1,600 rpm. He switched tanks and kept the auxiliary fuel pump on. The restart procedure was tried again, but fuel pressure remained zero. He attempted a glide to a dirt landing strip but had insufficient altitude and landed several hundred feet short in rough terrain; the nose gear collapsed when it encountered a ditch. Fuel quantity was verified on scene with the left tank full and the right tank at the bottom of the filler neck. The airframe and engine were examined following recovery and a 5-gallon fuel supply was attached to the right wing fuel system. The fuel selector valve was checked and operated normally. The boost pump was operated and the fuel pressure was observed in the normal range. The engine was primed, started, and run through the complete power range. A 50-rpm drop was observed when each magneto was checked at 1,700 rpm. Normal fuel flows were observed and leaning of the mixture was normal. No mechanical problems were encountered during the engine run and the engine shut down normally.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA094
- Event ID
- 20001205X00186
- Case number
- LAX99LA094
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 107e6d1d691a37de65e766e32e116dda027192218fe18eeb6d3da8eea2cf1948; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:51:30.334Z.