FTW99FA235 · Beech D-35
Beech D-35 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From Tulsa International Airport (TUL) to H45
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99FA235
- 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 D-35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft D-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
- N2934B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulsa International Airport (TUL), Tulsa, OKTo H45
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, connecting rod bolt › Failure
- Fluid, oil › Starvation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was inbound to the airport when the engine lost power. Subsequently, the pilot lost control of the airplane while maneuvering to avoid a business, trees, a residence, people on the ground, and power lines. The airplane impacted the terrain in a nose low attitude and was destroyed by the impact sequence, ensuing explosion, and fire. A hole was found in the crankcase of the Continental E-225-8 engine over the #6 cylinder, and the #6 connecting rod was found separated from the rod journal. An engine teardown revealed that the engine exhibited a massive oil starvation event. The #6 connecting rod was disconnected from the crankshaft journal due to the heat of the oil starvation event, which resulted in the failure of the connecting rod bolts in ductile overload from the elevated temperature. The reason for the oil starvation could not be determined by examination of the engine or the airplane wreckage. The maintenance records were destroyed by the post-impact fire, and the maintenance history for the engine could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power caused by oil starvation, which resulted in the failure of the #6 cylinder connecting rod bolts. A factor was the pilot's performance of an evasive maneuver to avoid impacting buildings, trees, people on the ground, and power lines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99FA235
- Event ID
- 20001212X19505
- Case number
- FTW99FA235
- 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: 79855d06371fe5dd8c127fa45ec27226e18ef73074166c01c2429f90b53e39e9; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:51:47.939Z.