CHI02LA027 · Beech V35
Beech V35 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA027
- 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 V35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 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
- N4890J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE), Mounds View, MNTo not recorded
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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; 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper use of
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said they departed Anoka County Airport (ANE) for some touch and go landings. The pilot said they performed two uneventful patterns and landings. As the airplane turned onto final approach for the third pattern, the engine stopped. The pilot recalled there was no roughness or sputtering prior to the complete loss of power. The airplane's flaps were set at 10-degrees and the landing gear was down. An engine restart was attempted with no success. The pilot said, "The landing gear was brought up to increase our glide distance but the airport could not be made. The terrain was wooded with homes interspersed. No good landing areas were apparent so I steered towards the trees rather than the homes. I then made an emergency call to the ANE control tower. We clipped trees with the right wing followed by the left wing. It was a hard impact and I was knocked unconscious soon after that. We landed nose first in a grove of trees close to a detached garage." The passenger in the rear seat said that they had been operating in the traffic pattern approximately 20 to 30 minutes when the engine quit. The passenger said the propeller continued to windmill. They turned base to final. Then the airplane's right wing hit a large tree. The airplane then went straight down. The passenger said as he got out of the airplane, he noted that fire was on the ground all around the airplane. The passenger said that when the airplane's engine quit, he noticed the right seat passenger reach over the pilot to get something. The passenger said the pilot tried to restart the engine, but it wouldn't start. An examination of the airplane's fuel system revealed the fuel selector valve positioned between the left and right tank lines providing no fuel to flow through the valve. An examination of the engine and other airplane systems revealed no anomalies. According to the airplane owner's manual, the Engine Failure checklist reads, "Fuel Selector - CHANGE TO OTHER CELL (check visually)"
Probable cause
Fuel starvation caused by the pilot's improper positioning of the fuel tank fuel selector while in the traffic pattern, and the unsuitable terrain encountered during the forced landing. Factors relating to the accident were the pilot not complying with the emergency procedures checklist, and the tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA027
- Event ID
- 20011113X02229
- Case number
- CHI02LA027
- 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: 36d81d058d2c73b772dcc793d9fd6c9d43bec49e03283e8ca581b0d214699a6b; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:44:35.431Z.