CHI98LA006 · Beech V35A
Beech V35A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From an unrecorded airport to Purdue University Airport (LAF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA006
- 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 V35A
- 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
- N1566A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Purdue University Airport (LAF)
- 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)
- 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; Stall
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness, near the approach end of the runway, monitoring the air traffic control tower frequency, heard the tower clear the airplane to enter left traffic for runway 23, and saw the airplane enter left downwind for the traffic pattern. The witness said that the airplane 'was very low for that part of the pattern, 300 to 500 feet above ground level. The pilot told the tower that he was abeam the numbers for runway 28 and wanted to land on that runway. The airplane 'began a sharp turn, but without much bank - probably skidding - when parallel to runway 28, the plane wobbled, banked sharply left and right, and lost altitude. The airplane 'appeared to be in a landing-type attitude, not nose down.' The airplane wobbled, straightened out, then 'disappeared from sight behind hills and buildings.' Examination of the airplane's fuel tanks revealed no fuel in the right fuel tank. Six gallons of fuel were recovered from the left fuel tank. The fuel selector valve in the airplane's cockpit was positioned on the right fuel tank. No other anomalies were found with the airplane.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper decision not to land before his airplane ran out of fuel, fuel exhaustion and the inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA006
- Event ID
- 20001208X08967
- Case number
- CHI98LA006
- 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: 4608648a045f5df398b0250db2543697de3eea4b030dde29e943e78476477080; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:47:12.862Z.