CHI98LA067 · Beech 35-B33
Beech 35-B33 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From 7D2 to Tri-State Airport / Milton J. Ferguson Field (HTS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA067
- 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 35-B33
- 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
- N512WM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 7D2To Tri-State Airport / Milton J. Ferguson Field (HTS), Huntington, WV
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Troy, MI, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after liftoff, at an altitude of 200 to 300 feet, the engine sputtered and began to lose power. He lowered the nose to prevent a stall and turned left '...to an area and a point where I could put the plane down at.' The airplane touched down, slid into an embankment, and was destroyed by fire. The pilot stated he had the fuel selector positioned on the left fuel tank when he performed the engine run-up and taxi. He then switched the selector to the right tank just before takeoff.
Probable cause
loss of engine power for undetermined reason(s). Factors associated with the accident were: the lack of a suitable forced landing site, and the embankment (dirt bank), which the airplane contacted.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA067
- Event ID
- 20001208X09282
- Case number
- CHI98LA067
- 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: 69625c1be782147d0eb2752c1cf2de9cbcb30a1487376f7be82ac7b3ebdf70d9; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:40:56.383Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states "The airplane touched down, slid into an embankment, and was destroyed by fire."