NYC99LA223 · Beech A23
Beech A23 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Wilkes Barre Wyoming Valley Airport (WBW) to N94
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA223
- 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 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
- N3508R
- Operator
- Joseph T. Gembusia · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wilkes Barre Wyoming Valley Airport (WBW), Wilkes-Barre, PATo N94
- 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
- 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, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on final approach, the engine lost all power, and the pilot performed a forced landing to a field. The pilot stated that after the landing, he moved the fuel selector from 'LEFT' to 'OFF'. Examination of the wreckage by a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Inspector did not reveal any pre-impact mechanical malfunctions. The inspector observed approximately 18 gallons of fuel in the right fuel tank. He did not observe any fuel in the left fuel tank. According to FAA records, on April 7, 1998, a Continental IO-346A was removed from the airplane; and a Lycoming IO-360 was installed. According to an engineering report from General Aviation Technical Services, Inc., the Lycoming engine burned more fuel per hour than the Continental engine. The pilot reported 16.7 hours of total flight experience in the accident airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management, resulting in fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA223
- Event ID
- 20001212X19860
- Case number
- NYC99LA223
- 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: ba083f08fa574b5bea46a2d21e8e163c17069d8230898b133bd149b8e35a615d; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:09:06.075Z.