FTW95LA119 · Beech 60
Beech 60 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF) to Dallas Love Field (DAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW95LA119
- 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 60
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 60
- 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
- N100BL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF), Santa Fe, NMTo Dallas Love Field (DAL), Dallas, TX
- 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 · climb to 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Engine assembly, connecting rod › Failure, total
- Exhaust system, turbocharger › Failure, total
- Fluid, oil › Starvation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
WHILE THE AIRPLANE WAS CLIMBING THROUGH FL230 IN DARK NIGHT VMC CONDITIONS, THE RIGHT ENGINE LOST POWER. SECONDS AFTER THE PILOT INITIATED AN EMERGENCY DESCENT, THE LEFT ENGINE LOST POWER. HE THEN ATTEMPTED SEVERAL UNSUCCESSFUL RESTARTS ON BOTH ENGINES UNTIL REACHING 15,000 MSL, AT WHICH TIME HE FEATHERED THE RIGHT ENGINE PROPELLER. CONTINUED ATTEMPTS TO RESTART THE LEFT ENGINE USING VARIOUS COMBINATIONS OF CROSS-FEED, MIXTURE, AND THROTTLE WERE NOT SUCCESSFUL. THE PILOT THEN EXECUTED A FORCED LANDING TO ROUGH TERRAIN WITH THE AIRPLANE COMING TO REST 1/3 MILES WEST OF AN AIRPORT. THE AIRPLANE WAS STRUCTURALLY DAMAGED DURING THE EMERGENCY LANDING. EXAMINATION OF THE RIGHT ENGINE REVEALED THAT THE #5 CONNECTING ROD FAILED DUE TO OIL STARVATION, AND PENETRATED THE CRANKCASE. ADDITIONALLY, THE TURBOCHARGER TURBINE WHEEL WAS FOUND SEPARATED FROM ITS SHAFT. EXAMINATION OF THE LEFT ENGINE ALSO REVEALED A FAILED TURBOCHARGER TURBINE WHEEL SHAFT. TEARDOWN OF BOTH TURBOCHARGER ASSEMBLIES REVEALED EVIDENCE OF EXCESSIVELY HIGH TURBINE INLET TEMPERATURES AND BOTH TURBOCHARGERS HAD UNAPPROVED PARTS INSTALLED.
Probable cause
THE FAILURE OF THE RIGHT ENGINE'S TURBOCHARGER RESULTING IN OIL STARVATION AND SUBSEQUENT FAILURE OF THE #5 CONNECTING ROD WHICH PENETRATED THE CRANKCASE, AND THE FAILURE OF THE LEFT ENGINE'S TURBOCHARGER RESULTING IN THE LOSS OF POWER ON BOTH ENGINES. FACTORS WERE THE LACK OF SUITABLE TERRAIN FOR THE FORCED LANDING, DARK NIGHT LIGHT CONDITIONS, AND UNAPPROVED TURBOCHARGER PARTS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW95LA119
- Event ID
- 20001207X02968
- Case number
- FTW95LA119
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1995-02-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d09f6908d95cabe65d1e08794b6a1b63c1db5049d2aa9843def06e0c5f54491e; retrieved 2026-09-23T00:13:33.452Z.