CHI02LA063 · Beech V35B
Beech V35B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Coles County Memorial Airport (MTO) to 2I5 · Rantoul, IL
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA063
- 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 V35B
- 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
- N4217S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coles County Memorial Airport (MTO), Mattoon, ILTo 2I5 · Rantoul, IL
- 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 · 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 › Distance/altitude, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Gear extension, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a forced landing the airplane landed short of the runway resulting in substantial damage. Approximately 4 - 5 miles northeast of the departure airport the engine began to fluctuate between 1,800 - 1,900 rpm. The pilot elected to turn back to the departure airport and enter the traffic pattern for runway 24. The pilot reported he lowered the landing gear while on downwind leg. The pilot stated the engine began to lose significant power while on base leg and he turned on the electric fuel pump and "worked throttle" with no change in engine performance. The pilot stated he turned onto the final approach for runway 24 and "Engine occasional sputter but seemed quieter. [Manifold] pressure, rpm just dropping, airspeed and altitude dropping quickly." The airplane landed approximately 1/4 mile short of runway 24. The engine was subjected to an operational test while still attached to the airframe and original fuel system. The engine started without hesitation and ran at varying power ranges without any anomalies.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. Factor to the accident was the unsuitable rough/uneven terrain encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA063
- Event ID
- 20020115X00072
- Case number
- CHI02LA063
- 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: 4c582daf13b1295792863ce5727916166b9a9278c74db0569bbce6416e16f97b; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:12:05.490Z.