DEN02LA068 · Beech K35
Beech K35 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) while maneuvering
From Montrose Regional Airport (MTJ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN02LA068
- 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 K35
- 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
- N9518R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montrose Regional Airport (MTJ), Montrose, COTo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he was practicing flight maneuvers between 500 to 1100 feet above ground level. He said the fuel selector was on the left main tank, and the engine began to sputter. He switched the fuel selector to the right main tank, but did not turn on the boost pump. All attempts to restart the engine failed and he made a forced landing in a bean field, subsequently wrinkling the fuselage, and bending several bulkheads and the lower centerline spar carry through members. An FAA inspector examined the accident aircraft and found the left main fuel tank empty, the right main tank was approximately half full (about 11 gallons), and the auxiliary selector position (two 10 gallon tanks feed one position) with approximately 15 gallons of fuel. The Pilot's Operating Handbook (POH) for the airplane states that the engine air start procedure includes turning the auxiliary fuel pump on "until power is regained, then off." A published temporary change to the POH states: The addition of a placard to the fuel selector to warn of the no-flow condition that exists between the fuel selector detents.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow published aircraft operating procedures, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN02LA068
- Event ID
- 20020708X01068
- Case number
- DEN02LA068
- 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: 3c182e482678f59d46605d40496584dc8ca0732aec46f1fa34d3af11e9cb81d0; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:47:51.559Z.