ATL03FA134 · Beech BE-35
Beech BE-35 · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Tri-Cities Regional TN/VA Airport (TRI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03FA134
- 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
- 2 · 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 BE-35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-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
- N4289B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tri-Cities Regional TN/VA Airport (TRI), Blountville, TNTo 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
- 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; Stall
- 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 › Airspeed(vso), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor was conducting an instructional flight with a student pilot located in the right front seat. The flight instructor's has 1.5 total hours in make and model. The airplane collided with the ground in a nose down attitude. A left and right wing leading edge ground scar was present on the ground. The left and right fuel main fuel tanks contain 20 gallons of fuel per side, and 17 gallons are useable. Both left and right main fuel tanks were ruptured. The left and right auxiliary fuel tip tanks were inoperative. The fuel selector valve was found in the right main fuel tank position. Browning of vegetation was present in front of the right main fuel tank. No browning of vegetation was present in the vicinity of the left main fuel tank. Review of performance data revealed the airplane would have used 16.4 gallons of fuel. Examination of the engine assembly revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The certified flight instructor's mismanagement of the fuel, resulting in a loss of engine power and his failure to maintain airspeed, which resulted in a stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03FA134
- Event ID
- 20030905X01465
- Case number
- ATL03FA134
- 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: 0c213d70796d88a022ec55dfed8fd3646d71eff6bb0830da247d309b0332a175; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:58:29.588Z.