NYC98LA096 · Beech C-50
Beech C-50 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From 55J · FERNANDINA, FL to W32 · Clinton, MD
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA096
- 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 C-50
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft C-50
- 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
- N377B
- Operator
- James E. Hays · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From 55J · FERNANDINA, FLTo W32 · Clinton, MD
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was flying an airplane he had purchased 18 days prior, from Florida to his home airport in Virginia. On one leg, the airplane's navigational and communications equipment failed and the pilot purchased a handheld global positioning system (GPS) receiver for navigation. While en route the pilot was unable to locate his proposed refueling stop and after 35 to 40 minutes of searching for the airport, his GPS receiver failed due to low battery power. The pilot stated, he was at 2,500 feet AGL, when the airplane's left and right engines simultaneously lost power, and he performed a forced landing to a field. Examination of the wreckage revealed 30 minutes to 1 hour of fuel remained. A 10 to 15 foot long power cable was wrapped around the propeller hub of the left engine. According to an FAA Inspector, propeller ground strikes indicated at least one engine was operating at the time of the accident and the airplane was removed from the accident site by the pilot before it could be examined further. The pilot reported over 3,600 hours of total flight experience, of which about 25 hours were multi-engine aircraft and 10 hours were in make and model.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power simultaneously on both engines as reported by the pilot, for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA096
- Event ID
- 20001211X09941
- Case number
- NYC98LA096
- 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: 529c29d0808926c2efb6e969df3e299597b8c9a4819600a721db295aeee4596b; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:52:35.382Z.