IAD97LA116 · Beech MUSKETEER 23 MUSKETEER
Beech MUSKETEER 23 MUSKETEER · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From USE to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA116
- 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 MUSKETEER 23 MUSKETEER
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft MUSKETEER 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
- N2372L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From USETo 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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)
- 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
- Fuel system › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The annual inspection was completed on the day of the accident, which included the installation of an overhauled engine. The pilot/co-owner hired a flight instructor for the first flight. Break in instructions for the engine were to run it for 2 hours at full throttle and mixture full rich. During takeoff the engine only produced 2,100 rpm's and the takeoff roll used 3,000 feet of the 3,800 foot runway. After flying 1 hour, the pilot landed and called the mechanic about the engine. The pilot was told that 'the timing may be off, or that the engine may still be a little tight.' The pilot then decided to fly again with the other co-owner. After another hour of flying, and during the turn to final, the engine quit. The pilot performed a forced landing to a field short of the runway. After the accident, a witness turned the fuel selector from the left tank to the off position. Only unusable fuel was found in the left wing tank, and the right wing tank was about 1/2 to 3/4 of full. Additionally, no fuel was found in the lines to the carburetor, and only residual fuel was in the engine driven fuel pump. The pilot's total flight experience was 84 hours.
Probable cause
The pilot's fuel mismanagement by his failure to switch fuel tank positions, which resulted in the fuel starvation and the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA116
- Event ID
- 20001208X08659
- Case number
- IAD97LA116
- 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 1997-08-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e8665d401be74cd5c8d1d4d73167840c1a881795e7a4d2c0285a0e1051477bad; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:11:38.650Z.