NYC01FA021 · Beech BE-23-24
Beech BE-23-24 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL) to The Ohio State University Airport - Don Scott Field (OSU)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01FA021
- 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
- 3 · 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 BE-23-24
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-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
- N7951L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL), Cleveland, OHTo The Ohio State University Airport - Don Scott Field (OSU), Columbus, OH
- 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 · descent
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane departed, and flew 54 minutes on a cross country flight before landing. Without refueling, the airplane departed for the return trip. 1 hour and 2 minutes into the flight home, the pilot reported a rough running engine and a loss of power. The airplane impacted a four-lane-interstate highway. On a standard day, the airplane would use 9.1 gph of fuel at 63 percent power and 6,500 feet. At 75 percent power, the airplane would use 12.3 gph. Witnesses reported that the day before the accident, the aircraft had 7.5 gallons in the left tank and 15 gallons in the right tank. The airplane was then flown 1.3 hours. After the flight, the airplane was not serviced until just before the accident flight when 13.2 gallons of fuel was added. The pilot's operating handbook requires the pilot to visually check the fuel quantity for both tanks during the preflight inspection. Examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact failures or malfunctions. In addition, exanimation of the engine revealed evidence consistent with fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to check both fuel tanks visually during the preflight inspection. A factor in the accident was the dark night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01FA021
- Event ID
- 20001212X22229
- Case number
- NYC01FA021
- 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 2000-10-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8e75fb6497e5370f9a32aca39fbbf57e9d7f9cc1bdda308e006b6c03bfdecad5; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:48:47.872Z.