FTW96LA304 · Beech 76
Beech 76 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport (MKC) to City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA304
- 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 76
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 76
- 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
- N6708A
- Operator
- William E. Roth · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport (MKC), Kansas City, MOTo City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), COLORADO SPGS, CO
- 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 · 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Airport, not identified
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, inaccurate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Falcon, CO, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
In preparation for the cross-country flight, the pilot visually checked the fuel tanks for the specified quantity and found they were fueled evenly to the specified level. The right gauge showed lower than the left. During cruise flight at 11,000 feet msl, with about 30 min remaining to destination, the right tank fuel gauge was indicating less than 1/4 full and the left tank fuel gauge was indicating slightly less than 1/2 full. The left engine then quit and the pilot requested vectors to the nearest airport, which was about 4 miles distance. (The single engine service ceiling of the aircraft for the operating conditions present was 5,500 feet msl. The terrain elevation was 6,874 feet and the density altitude was 8,100 feet.) During descent for landing, the pilot thought the left engine might run so he restarted it and it ran until shut down via the mixture after landing. The pilot spotted what he thought was the airport, and during approach discovered it was a residential street. Because he had unexplainable power problems, he continued the approach and landed. During landing roll, the left wing collided with a mail box post. Examination revealed that the fuel lines were crossed. No maintenance entry was found to determine when this maintenance error occurred, and examination of like aircraft provided no duplication of fuel line routing. With the fuel feed line plumbing routed in the manner it was found, had the pilot selected cross feed it is possible that both engines would have lost power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the pilot's inaccurate fuel consumption calculation, and his failure to properly identify the area of intended landing as an airport. A factor was the misrouting of the fuel line by unknown persons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA304
- Event ID
- 20001208X06226
- Case number
- FTW96LA304
- 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 1996-07-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c7f8165e8823ca63374eca67c8762aab47486a15ed4a1ae5866096e36af77acc; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:51:14.113Z.