LAX03FA057 · Beech 95
Beech 95 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Ryan Field (RYN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03FA057
- 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
- 1 · 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 95
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 95
- 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
- N8212D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ryan Field (RYN), Tucson, AZTo 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel system, primer system › Not secured
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(v2 min), not attained
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Powerplant controls, not set
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane veered and rolled to the right after liftoff, and then went nose first into the ground. As the airplane took off, witnesses on the airport heard an engine "pop", which sounded to them like a backfire. The right wing dropped and then the airplane's nose went down and into the ground. Controllers in the Air Traffic Control Tower observed the airplane liftoff and begin a turn to the right at midfield, though they thought that the altitude, which they estimated at 60 to 80 feet, was very low. The airplane also appeared to be going slow as the airplane kept turning to the right and the nose pitched continuously up. The controllers then saw the right wing drop followed by the nose as the airplane went straight down. The landing gear was in the down and locked position, and the flaps were in the up position. The rudder trim was in the neutral position. Examination of the left engine and propeller found signatures consistent with engine rotation, and the left propeller was not feathered. Internal evidence in the right propeller revealed that it was operating at a high blade angle consistent with operation at low speed. The right engine spark plugs for cylinders 1, 2, and 4 were sooty and black, while the plugs in cylinder 3 were gray. The starting primer system is plumbed to cylinders 1, 2, and 4; the cockpit control for the right engine primer system was unlocked and extended about 1/4-inch. The pilot obtained his multiengine rating 3 weeks prior to the accident. and had a total of 20 hours in multiengine airplanes, which were all in this make and model. The owner's manual noted that liftoff airspeed was 85 while the safe single engine speed was 100 miles per hour (mph) indicated airspeed (IAS), which is still below best single engine rate of climb airspeed. The manual specified that at 100 mph or greater, the pilot could follow normal single engine procedures. Below this airspeed, the pilot had to attain it either through altitude loss or by making a landing. The manual instructed the pilot to land straight ahead and stop with loss of power in one engine below 90 mph at 100 feet, or below 100 mph at 50 feet.
Probable cause
a loss power in the right engine due to an excessively rich mixture that was the result of the pilot's failure to secure the priming control prior to takeoff. Also causal was the pilot's failure to follow the single engine procedures specified in the operating manual for this aircraft, and, his failure to attain and maintain the correct airspeeds for single engine operation, and to maintain directional control. A factor was the pilot's lack of total experience in multiengine aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03FA057
- Event ID
- 20030107X00031
- Case number
- LAX03FA057
- 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: b9260b2a6c40f491c2e1dae97c270856385bd7d26c349b2e73e6bf517cadd71f; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:32:12.080Z.