CHI98LA366 · Beech BE-35
Beech BE-35 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From an unrecorded airport to Slidell, LA
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA366
- 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 BE-35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-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
- N8946M
- Operator
- Dennis Watermann
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Slidell, LA
- 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 · climb to 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Mixture control › Output low
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Point Lookout, MO, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft impacted terrain, while returning to Runway 29 at M. Graham Clark Airport, Point Lookout, Missouri, after experiencing a partial loss of engine power. The pilot reported that the mechanic, who inspected the mixture control, had replaced the outer mixture control clamps. The pilot also stated that the mechanic recommended to leave the control full rich until a mechanic could troubleshoot the reason that the control linkage allowed the mixture to go over center. The pilot stated that no paperwork was generated on the clamp replacement and that the mechanic did not want to charge for the work. The mechanic stated, that he had replaced a cable housing clamp and rigged the mixture control to the full rich stop. He also told the pilot that it was still not rigged correctly and would take a week to troubleshoot and repair. The mechanic further reported, that he showed the discrepancy to the pilot and told him he could do whatever he wanted to do. Inspection of the aircraft revealed that there was fuel present in both fuel tanks. Both magnetos were tested and no anomalies were noted. Inspection of the mixture control revealed that it was not travelling to the idle cut-off stop and that the full rich stop pin was not in place.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight with a known deficiency in equipment. Contributing to the accident was the maintenance adjustment that was not completed by the mechanic.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA366
- Event ID
- 20001211X11034
- Case number
- CHI98LA366
- 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: 7fb9452e05c795e57caa8ab1e9efbf34de5ab404d15735770b0f1a0409d59118; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:37:49.650Z.