NYC90LA182 · Beech 58P
Beech 58P · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Westover Metropolitan Airport / Westover Air Reserve Base (CEF) to Potsdam Municipal Airport Damon Field (PTD)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC90LA182
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 58P
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 58
- 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
- N138P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Westover Metropolitan Airport / Westover Air Reserve Base (CEF)To Potsdam Municipal Airport Damon Field (PTD), POTTSDAM, NY
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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)
- 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
- Airport personnel › Refueling, improper
- All engines › Loss, total
- Fluid, fuel grade › Improper
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Chicopee, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed a pre-flight inspection, drained the fuel tank sumps and taxied to the ramp for fuel. The refueler pulled up in a 10,000-gallon truck marked Jet-A and put 50 gallons in each side while the pilot watched. The pilot said that he was not worried because he knew that a jet-fuel truck had been converted to avgas for an airshow that had just taken place, the nozzle fit into the wing and he had restrictors to prevent a jet-fuel nozzle from being placed in the tank, and he thought that the refueler had refueled the airplane before. The pilot stated that he assumed that this was the truck that had been converted to dispense avgas. The pilot taxied for takeoff and did not make a runup because he had already warmed up the engines and completed a runup prior to refueling. He lost power in both engines after getting airborne and landed on the remaining runway. The refueler thought that the Beech Baron was turbine powered. The FAA reported that the fuel nozzle was an improper nozzle installed for overwing refueling and that the 5,000-gallon jet-fuel truck that had been converted to avgas was properly marked and contained avgas.
This narrative was modified on August 18, 2005.
Probable cause
DOUBLE POWER LOSS DUE TO IMPROPER FUELING PROCEDURES. FACTORS RELATING TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: IMPROPER PRE-FLIGHT ACTIONS BY THE PILOT AND WRONG FUEL.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC90LA182
- Event ID
- 20001212X24100
- Case number
- NYC90LA182
- 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: e6dcdac4fddaa2c9ddd2eb272030664cef4e620bf67474ba350b14ef1903b6c5; retrieved 2026-09-18T19:00:34.626Z.