IAD98LA084 · Beech BE24
Beech BE24 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Raleigh County Memorial Airport (BKW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98LA084
- 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 BE24
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 24
- 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
- N9711L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raleigh County Memorial Airport (BKW), WVTo 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
- 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 (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 starvation
- 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
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was in cruise flight, approximately 15 minutes after departure, when the engine started to surge and sputter. The pilot turned to the departure airport and initiated a climb. He said he changed the fuel selector from the right tank position to the left, but '...nothing happened.' He moved the fuel selector back to the right tank, and selected a golf course for a forced landing site where the airplane struck trees and came to rest in a pond. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the right fuel tank was completely empty, not contaminated by water, and that the fuel selector was in the right tank position. The left tank contained approximately 27 gallons of fuel and an unknown quantity of water. The pilot reported he had 30 gallons of fuel on board at takeoff. The fuel system was examined and no evidence of fuel was found in the engine-driven fuel pump, fuel injector, or flow divider manifold. No evidence of fuel was found in the fuel line to the fuel pressure gauge. Examination of records revealed the airplane's most recent fuel service was for 23 gallons of fuel and that the airplane accumulated approximately 2 hours of flight time after the service.
Probable cause
The pilot's mismanagement of the fuel supply in that the fuel selector was selected to the improper fuel tank, which resulted in fuel starvation and the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98LA084
- Event ID
- 20001211X10613
- Case number
- IAD98LA084
- 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: c4f89bb5b9ac57c69d91072aaa9dba8bf4413951610d81df19e73176deace9f1; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:44:27.029Z.