NYC02LA002 · Beech C-45H
Beech C-45H · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH) to Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA002
- 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 C-45H
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft C-45
- 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
- N8393H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH), Nashua, NHTo Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH), Hudson, NH
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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
- Pilot in command › Lack of familiarity with aircraft
- Pilot in command › Wrong propeller feathered, not identified
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Twin Beech (C-45H) departed on a local training flight with the pilot/owner in the left seat and a flight instructor in the right seat to conduct a flight review. Shortly after departure, the left engine started to shake, then it seized. While the flight instructor reached for the emergency checklist, the pilot/owner inadvertently feathered the good engine. The flight instructor took control of the airplane and performed a forced landing. The feathering buttons were only accessible to the pilot/owner, who had never unfeathered an engine in flight, was not familiar with the procedures necessary to restart the engine, and was subsequently unable to assist in unfeathering the engine for a restart. He had 55 hours in make and model, with none in the preceding 90 days.
Probable cause
The pilot/owner's failure to properly identify the inoperative engine prior to feathering the wrong propeller, and his lack of familiarity with the required corrective procedures. A factor was the initial engine failure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA002
- Event ID
- 20011011X02072
- Case number
- NYC02LA002
- 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: 9e11d9f9a0bc013e8fbd4ab2b998a7e4cde3d4709d9f5ec21c272f6bdcdaef0d; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:50:36.534Z.