SEA99FA112 · Beech A23
Beech A23 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO) to WA20
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99FA112
- 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
- 1 · 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 A23
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 23
- 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
- N8873M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO), Arlington, WATo WA20
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Neither the pilot nor the pilot-rated passenger recall the events leading up to the accident. Witnesses reported that the aircraft was observed low on final approach and that the engine lost power. One witness reported that just before he lost sight of the aircraft, he heard a noise as if the engine was trying to be started. The flight was returning from an approximate two hour flight duration. Fuel consumption calculations estimated for the flight indicate that approximately 14 to 19 gallons of fuel would be required for the flight, with 16 to 11 gallons remaining at the completion of the flight. The flight began with approximately 30 gallons of fuel. Documentation of the wreckage indicated that approximately 12 gallons of fuel was drained from the left wing fuel tank, while only 22 ounces of fuel was drained from the right fuel tank. The fuel selector was found positioned to the left side fuel tank. There was no evidence of fuel leakage. Post-crash examination of the engine revealed that no fuel was found in the fuel lines. The engine was then prepared for an engine run. The engine was started and ran long enough to demonstrate smooth operation.
Probable cause
Improper fuel management which led to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99FA112
- Event ID
- 20001212X19357
- Case number
- SEA99FA112
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-07-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1c1c381d15f500aebcea47d86267237d972d17794f79697e3d7ca62e8a72719c; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:59:27.469Z.