IAD96LA092 · Beech V35B
Beech V35B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From W54 · MD to Hagerstown Regional Richard A Henson Field (HGR)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA092
- 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
- N369JR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From W54 · MDTo Hagerstown Regional Richard A Henson Field (HGR), Hagerstown, MD
- 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
- 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
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Fatigue
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the preflight, taxi and runup were normal. After takeoff, he retracted the landing gear, climbed to 2000 feet mean sea level, and after he steadied on his outbound heading, the pilot stated he reduced RPM. His normal amount of control input for reduction in RPM brought about too large of a reduction in power and was associated with a rough engine at first, and then a loss of engine sounds. After lowering the nose of the airplane, he changed fuel tanks, checked individual magnetos and turned back towards the airport. It was at this time that the pilot believed he heard a knock and shortly thereafter, the propeller stopped windmilling. His attention was now focused on choosing a field in which to land. He altered his selection of a field based on some trees, and when he saw that he had his alternate field made, he selected the gear down. The pilot stated that the landing gear did not have enough time to extend and the airplane slide on a mowed hay field for approximately 300 feet.
Probable cause
The fracture of the engine crankshaft which had a subsurface origin and progressed in fatigue until overload and separation occurred.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA092
- Event ID
- 20001208X06008
- Case number
- IAD96LA092
- 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: d358e5d973fda4a667ec9a12d50d9b53d4a2ca7f77b9d3915d18efc9cac4920a; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:20:41.648Z.