MIA97LA093 · Beech E35
Fullington Air Frieght Beech E35 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From X47 · BUNAELL, FL to Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA093
- 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 E35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N3257C
- Operator
- Fullington Air Frieght
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From X47 · BUNAELL, FLTo Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS), ST LOUIS, MO
- 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 (mechanical 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; Tree(s)
- 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
- Fuel system, drain › Corroded
- Fuel system, selector/valve › Foreign material/substance
- Fuel system, selector/valve › Jammed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 45 minutes after takeoff, while cruising at 8,500 feet, the pilot attempted to reposition the fuel selector to another tank, but the selector would not move. He elected to land as soon as possible to have the problem corrected. While on short final to land, the engine lost power. Attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful. About 400 yards from the runway, the airplane's left wing struck a tree, and the airplane crashed in a swamp. An FAA investigator interviewed the pilot and asked him when he last moved the fuel selector valve. The pilot stated that he last moved it on 'the day before the flight and [it] operated normally at that time.' The fuel selector was 'not moved' before he departed for this flight. For this flight, he had used an 'abbreviated checklist.' Item 12 in the airplane's Flight Manual under the heading of starting procedures, stated; '...Activate the [fuel] selector valve several times by rotating the handle from tank to tank to ensure that the selector valve is free.' The abbreviated checklist that the pilot used did not contain item 12. Examination of the airplane's fuel selector revealed that the selector valve was stuck in the left fuel tank position due to rust from the fuel/drain spring. The rust had worked its way in between the valve seat, causing the valve to be 'stuck in place.' The left fuel tank had been breached during the accident sequence; the amount of fuel in tank at the time of the accident was not verified.
Probable cause
a stuck (jammed) fuel selector valve, due to corrosion from a fuel drain spring, which resulted in fuel starvation, loss of engine power, a forced landing, and subsequent impact with trees. A factor relating to the accident was: the pilot's inadequate preflight while using an abbreviated checklist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA093
- Event ID
- 20001208X07594
- Case number
- MIA97LA093
- 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: 8f81ab1b16942338041ab498bb66f813abc603d66acd595ae7b180c88df4ae87; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:12:55.951Z.