LAX00LA197 · Beech H35
Beech H35 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Falcon Field (FFZ) to Show Low Regional Airport (SOW)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA197
- 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 H35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 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
- N5477D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Falcon Field (FFZ), Mesa, AZTo Show Low Regional Airport (SOW), Show Low, AZ
- 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 › Checklist, not verified
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on short final the airplane drifted below the glide slope. The pilot advanced the throttle to find that the airplane had lost power. An attempt was made to restart the engine and the fuel tanks were switched, but the airplane was already at a low altitude. The airplane impacted the ground short of the runway. The auxiliary tanks were damaged from the impact and found dry, according to the recovery person. Friends of the pilot reportedly moved the wreckage and drained the fuel in the airplane before authorized inspection. Twenty-six gallons of fuel was removed from the left main. In a post crash examination, the engine tested successfully after an adjustment was made to a fuel line separation that had been damaged from impact. The pilot bought 35.5 gallons of fuel before the flight and by his own account filled the tanks.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly position the fuel selector to a tank with fuel resulting in fuel starvation, a loss of engine power, and subsequent collision with the ground during the final landing approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA197
- Event ID
- 20001212X21043
- Case number
- LAX00LA197
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-05-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4544e6c8d72a86718010629ab942274a4a05db02e849b1fff4a948a2ab0ac965; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:13:59.312Z.