LAX96LA175 · Beech V35B
Beech V35B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Salinas Municipal Airport (SNS) to Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA175
- 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 V35B
- 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
- N8711V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salinas Municipal Airport (SNS), Salinas, CATo Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA)
- 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 final
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Santa Barbara, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
At the end of the cross-country flight, the pilot made a reduced power descent over a nearby 4,000-foot mountain ridge in order to land at the sea level airport. The pilot continued his descent in the airport traffic pattern and, while on final approach for landing, attempted to add engine power to adjust his approach flight path. When the throttle was advanced there was no response from the engine and the aircraft subsequently landed short of the runway. When examined after the accident, the engine, which was exposed to a postcrash fire and fire fighting activities, contained no fuel, and only a small quantity of a foul smelling blackish/brown liquid. The pilot reported that the right-hand tank had been selected and that he had flown approximately 2.5 hours while drawing fuel from that tank. The engine was subsequently run satisfactorily in a test cell.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to select a fuel tank containing an adequate quantity of fuel prior to landing, which resulted in fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA175
- Event ID
- 20001208X05619
- Case number
- LAX96LA175
- 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: 91648fa2866f0f412a233457da53b658d493f8a7f8e91d0f7bda55219310a882; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:48:48.912Z.