LAX01LA099 · Beech 77
Beech 77 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN) to Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA099
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 77
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 77
- 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
- N18152
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN), Auburn, CATo Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN), Auburn, CA
- 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
- 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
- Partial 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to taking off, the airplane sat for about 10 minutes near the approach end of the runway. The pilot indicated that during this time no carburetor heat was applied to the engine. Thereafter, when he commenced taking off, full engine power was not produced. The airplane climbed between 250 and 300 feet above the runway, descended and impacted trees, and then collided with terrain about 1,500 feet beyond the runway's departure end. The pilot indicated that the accident could have been prevented had he, before initiating his takeoff and while waiting for landing traffic, applied carburetor heat to the engine. At the time, the temperature and dew point were 9 and 1 degree Celsius, respectively. According to a standard reference icing probability chart, the atmospheric conditions were in the range considered favorable for carburetor ice formation. The pilot reported that no mechanical malfunctions or failures were experienced with the airplane. The engine was subsequently examined, and no evidence of any internal mechanical malfunction was noted. The mixture control cable was found improperly rigged. As a result, when the cockpit mixture control was set to the full rich position, the mixture control arm on the carburetor was between the midrange position and 2/3 of the way to the idle cutoff position. The significance of the incorrect rigging to the loss of engine power could not be established.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during initial takeoff climb due to the formation of carburetor ice. A contributing factor was the pilot's improper pretakeoff actions. A finding was that the improper rigging of the mixture control cable may have precluded establishment of the proper fuel/air combustion ratio.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA099
- Event ID
- 20010227X00516
- Case number
- LAX01LA099
- 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, coordinates. 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: 4d5fc1cb1dc48da62b1ea0ad9d45defb830f300f66149434026a9fba2e0723af; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:12:50.612Z.