FTW96FA072 · Beech 35
Beech 35 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From 20V to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA072
- 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
- 2 · 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 35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N1969D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 20VTo not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Dual student › Fuel tank selector position, improper
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Fuel management, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After approximately 2 hours on a local area student training flight, the engine lost power following takeoff from a touch-and-go. A forced landing was made in a field and the aircraft remained intact following a high-g, flat, wings-level touchdown. Examination revealed the right wing fuel tank and auxiliary tank were empty, and the left tank contained 7 gallons. The fuel tank selector was between the left and right tank, and in that position would not pass fuel. The selector is located on the floor by the outboard forward corner of the left pilot's seat which the student pilot was occupying. It is not accessible or visible from the right pilot's seat. There were no markings on the selector panel; however, detents could be easily discerned by feel.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the student pilot's improper positioning of the fuel selector and the the CFI's inadequate fuel management. Factors in the accident were: the unmarked fuel selector and the CFI's excessive descent rate during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA072
- Event ID
- 20001207X04996
- Case number
- FTW96FA072
- 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: 583f206905a39ba4bc82ef25e620802f8fcc86d1dde290adf03f60a6da255097; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:29:47.284Z.