MIA02LA030 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (GTU) to Destin Executive Airport (DTS)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA030
- 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 A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N1836L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (GTU), Georgetown, TXTo Destin Executive Airport (DTS), Destin, FL
- 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 (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
- Fuel starvation
- 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 › Proper touchdown point, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he had been airborne for about 3 hours and 15 minutes, and after having descended from 7,000 feet, just before reaching his assigned altitude of 5,000 feet, as he manipulated the throttle control to increase engine power, "the throttle had no effect, and the engine appeared to be generating no power." The pilot said that he performed the emergency procedures, declared an emergency, and made a gear up landing, about 100 feet short of the runway. According to the pilot, an examination of the aircraft determined that the right main fuel tank had less than 2 gallons of fuel remaining. He said that he had been operating the aircraft on the right main tank when the engine had ceased operating. He also said that the left main fuel tank had over 20 gallons of fuel remaining. A licensed FAA aircraft mechanic examined the aircraft and found that it had incurred substantial damege. The mechanic also stated that he found a maximum of about a half of a gallon of fuel remaining in the right main tank, along with debris, and about 18 gallons of fuel remaining in the left tank. According to the mechanic, a detailed examination did not reveal any malfunctions to the aircraft's induction, fuel or ignition systems.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to properly manage the available fuel in all fuel tanks, which resulted in the loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, a forced landing, and damage to the aircraft when the proper touch down point was not attained.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA030
- Event ID
- 20011204X02345
- Case number
- MIA02LA030
- 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: 9ed929bae3630742c7c4910ff147bdd60bfc704c54171d2387de5d02a1cca074; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:20:33.080Z.