CHI96LA346 · Beech B23
Beech B23 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From University of Illinois Willard Airport (CMI) to La Crosse Regional Airport (LSE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA346
- 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 B23
- 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
- N66338
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From University of Illinois Willard Airport (CMI), Champaign, ILTo La Crosse Regional Airport (LSE), LACROSSE, WI
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that during the cross country flight the engine quit. She switched tanks and the engine ran for a few minutes and quit again. A forced landing was conducted in a rough field. A postaccident investigation revealed one quart of fuel drained from the entire airplane. The fuel tanks were intact and there was no evidence of leakage, siphoning or fuel stains. The engine ran successfully after the addition of fuel. The pilot thought the airplane was fueled prior to the accident flight, however there is no evidence that it was.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate aircraft preflight which led to fuel exhaustion. A factor was the rough uneven terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA346
- Event ID
- 20001208X06704
- Case number
- CHI96LA346
- 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: 82c8fed6a1e90e8be545ee726596b6596eb8a21df75d36f3ac36041d65a0e3c3; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:04:37.957Z.