CHI99LA253 · Beech B36TC
Beech B36TC · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Columbia Regional Airport (COU) to Eppley Airfield (OMA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA253
- 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 B36TC
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N587DL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Regional Airport (COU), Columbia, MOTo Eppley Airfield (OMA), Omaha, NE
- 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 (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
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Failure, total
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot advised controllers that the aircraft engine was running rough and he was shutting it down. The pilot later stated that the engine began to shake violently and that he was concerned that the engine would become detached from the engine mount. The pilot executed a forced landing on a farm field. The aircraft had accumulated a total time of 62.5 hours and the new engine had accumulated 42 hours. External examination of the engine revealed three broken engine mounts. No other external evidence of damage was noted. The engine case was disassembled and the engine crankshaft was found to be broken at the connecting rod journal for the number one cylinder. A metallurgical analysis revealed striations typical of fatigue cracking. The fatigue origin was found to be 0.033 inches below the surface. No metallurgical anomalies were noted in a section made near the fracture origin.
Probable cause
the total mechanical failure of the engine crankshaft due to fatigue. A factor was the ditch encountered on landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA253
- Event ID
- 20001212X19211
- Case number
- CHI99LA253
- 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: 792c55e7da2fd84b40f43468c23cbf0c8abd79760b97ddfb9f969229ee28ca5b; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:23:23.263Z.