LAX96LA221 · Beech 23-A24R
Beech 23-A24R · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (MOD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA221
- 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 23-A24R
- 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
- N102KB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (MOD)To 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff, the pilot was on climbout when the engine suddenly quit and he was forced to make an emergency landing. He said he had taken off with half fuel and had flown with the fuel boost pump switch in the on position. An aircraft mechanic examined the accident aircraft and found approximately 3 ounces of fuel at the left tank drain valve and an additional 0.5 gallon at the right tank drain valve. He also found about two drops of fuel in the fuel injection servo, but there was no fuel at the firewall line fitting. The fuel selector was in the off position. He said that it is a common practice for fire department personnel to turn the fuel selector off after an aircraft is involved in an accident. He did not observe any evidence of fluid leaks or discontinuity in the fuel system.
Probable cause
fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's inadequate preflight inspection of the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA221
- Event ID
- 20001208X06026
- Case number
- LAX96LA221
- 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 1996-06-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f092d3235822192991e26d1041a1e9605cb8a986f47e672359f9661d28723b89; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:20:28.879Z.