LAX95FA341 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Stockton Metropolitan Airport (SCK) to Zamperini Field (TOA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX95FA341
- 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 A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N15278
- Operator
- Bradley A. Humphrey · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stockton Metropolitan Airport (SCK), Stockton, CATo Zamperini Field (TOA), Torrance, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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 (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel starvation; Tree(s)
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 70-hour student pilot was returning from a night cross-country flight when his home base airport went IFR. He diverted to another airport where the tower was closed. While descending in a 360-degree turn to lose altitude the engine quit. After switching tanks and turning the boost pump on he got a brief restart. After it quit again he switched tanks without a restart. Unable to reach the airport he descended into an unlighted spot in a residential area with the gear down and approach flaps. The airplane collided with trees into a residential backyard. According to the pilot's computer generated flight plan, he should have had 12.7 gallons of useable fuel remaining between the two stock fuel tanks. His electronic fuel computers non-volatile memory indicated 15.5 gallons remaining. There were minimal signs of fuel remaining at the accident scene. The student pilot had not been endorsed for the cross-country flight.
Probable cause
the pilot's fuel mismanagement and failure to assure that an adequate supply of fuel was available. His lack of familiarity with the airplane's fuel system, overcofidence, the dark night, and the lack of a suitable landing area were factors in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX95FA341
- Event ID
- 20001207X04515
- Case number
- LAX95FA341
- 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 1995-09-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bbe22fcc60b027e33eade04949b675329613dd2d1d284c3c57b24ac3dceb6e45; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:03:44.477Z.