GTA Air Beech D55 accident
Beech D55 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) to Dallas Love Field (DAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA373
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 D55
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 55
- 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
- N873LB
- Operator
- Gta Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William P. Hobby Airport (HOU), Houston, TXTo Dallas Love Field (DAL), Dallas, TX
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vmc), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was on a night cross-country freight flight. A pilot witness reported that the pilot told him, on 122.85, that his left engine had failed. A second pilot witness reported hearing the pilot transmit that the engine came back on line when he switched to the aux tank, but he decided to make a precautionary landing prior to Dallas anyway. The pilot transmitted to ATC: 'I will contact you when I get on the ground and let you know the name of the airport.' The airport had pilot controlled lighting, on 122.80, which included a VASI approach system. The airplane was found with the gear down, the flaps down, the left propeller at low pitch but not feathered, and the right engine throttle at idle. The fuel selectors were found with the right one on the main tank and the left one on the aux tank. No fuel was found in the left wing tanks. The second pilot witness stated that she flew the airplane the night before, and that fuel had siphoned from the left main tank, which she reported to dispatch upon landing. Postcrash examination of the left wing main fuel port collar revealed deformations in the collar. The pilot had completed his Part 135 check ride 3 days before the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain minimum control airspeed which resulted in the loss of control. Factors were the bent collar of the left main fuel tank refueling neck which resulted in fuel siphoning from the tank in flight, the pilot's failure to follow procedures to cross feed fuel from the right main tank to the left engine which led to left engine power loss by fuel starvation, the pilot's lack of total experience in the make and model of airplane, and the dark night light condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA373
- Event ID
- 20001208X06714
- Case number
- FTW96FA373
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 412849a6c305e0942e5d0a87cb3e4f3ed36466ce50d613390bd7f2a282041615; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:36:27.322Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N873LB; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.