FTW90LA103 · Beech BE-35M
Beech BE-35M · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH) to David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW90LA103
- 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 BE-35M
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-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
- N1ZY
- Operator
- Davis, Harold E. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH)To David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH)
- 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 (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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, piston › Overtemperature
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRPLANE WAS DAMAGED WHEN IT COLLIDED WITH A FENCE AND A DITCH DURING A FORCED LANDING FOLLOWING A COMPLETE ENGINE FAILURE. INVESTIGATION REVEALED THAT THE NO. 5 PISTON WAS SEVERELY HEAT ERODED WITH PIECES MISSING. THE EROSION ALLOWED EXHAUST VENTING (BLOW BY) INTO THE CASE. THERE WAS SOME EVIDENCE OF PRE-IGNITION ON THE OTHER PISTONS' BUT NOT TO THE EXTENT AS ON NO. 5. IT WAS DETERMINED THAT THE ENGINE WAS 17 HOURS OUT OF A MAJOR OVERHAUL AND HAD BEEN USING AUTO GAS AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT. IT APPEARED THAT THE PISTON EROSION HAD OCCURRED OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME.
Probable cause
AN ENGINE FAILURE DUE TO DETONATION AND SUBSEQUENT PISTON OVERTEMPERATURE AND EROSION. A FACTOR RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WAS THE LACK OF SUITABLE TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW90LA103
- Event ID
- 20001212X22931
- Case number
- FTW90LA103
- 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: ad0d85fe0fb71c4a3616228ef70cc8557f390e2fb9713990a1d63a2e5bd36ceb; retrieved 2026-09-23T06:24:15.214Z.