LAX96FA236 · Beech C23
Beech C23 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Hollywood Burbank/Bob Hope Airport (BUR) to Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96FA236
- 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
- 3 · 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 C23
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 23
- 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
- N66343
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hollywood Burbank/Bob Hope Airport (BUR), Burbank, CATo Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, 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
- 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
- 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
- Pole
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, replacement, not performed
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, service of aircraft/equipment, inadequate
- Fuel system, electric boost pump › Inoperative
- Ignition system, magneto › Arcing
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had flown an earlier flight in the accident airplane without incident. On the second takeoff the engine lost power. Examination of the airplane revealed the right magneto was malfunctioning and the electric fuel boost pump was inoperative. Maintenance was performed on both components the day before the accident during a 50-hour inspection by company maintenance personnel. The plane had accumulated about 4 flight hours since the inspection. The airplane manufacturer indicates in the pilot operating handbook that the fuel boost pump should be replaced at engine overhaul and the engine be overhauled every 2,000 hours. The airplane had accumulated a total time in service of 3,338 hours. The maintenance records note that a major overhaul was accomplished about 1,692 hours before the accident. There was no evidence of the fuel boost pump ever being replaced. The use of the fuel boost pump is specified in the airplane emergency procedures for engine failure.
Probable cause
company maintenance personnel's inadequate service of the magneto system, and their failure of to replace the electric fuel boost pump, which led to a malfunctioning right magneto and an inoperative fuel boost pump. The inoperative fuel boost pump made it impossible for the pilot to accomplish the published emergency procedure for the engine failure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96FA236
- Event ID
- 20001208X06020
- Case number
- LAX96FA236
- 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: 59b07cce48ac2f47a043538a66ee31bfc1515fcd0753046b8a5235d8175cb4aa; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:19:37.194Z.