CHI04LA009 · Beech A33
Beech A33 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Philip Billard Municipal Airport (TOP) to Lee's Summit Municipal Airport (LXT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA009
- 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 A33
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 33
- 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
- N471T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Philip Billard Municipal Airport (TOP), Topeka, KSTo Lee's Summit Municipal Airport (LXT), Lee's Summit, MO
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Fuel system, selector/valve › Separation
- Fuel tank selector position › Not possible
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with a hay bale during an off airport forced landing following a loss of engine power. The pilot reported he attempted to switch the fuel selector from an auxiliary tank to a main fuel tank when the fuel handle came off in his hand. The pilot reported, "I put the handle back on the shaft but it would not move the selector valve. It would only spin on the shaft." He reported that shortly thereafter, the fuel in the auxiliary tank was exhausted and the engine lost power. The pilot reported he selected a field in which to make the forced landing. He stated that during the landing the left wing contacted a large hay bale that was in the field. Post accident inspection of the fuel selector indicated the roll pin which holds the selector handle on its shaft was missing. The pin was not located.
Probable cause
Separation of the fuel selector handle which resulted in fuel exhaustion and the subsequent loss of engine power. A factor was the hay bale that the airplane contacted during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA009
- Event ID
- 20031015X01730
- Case number
- CHI04LA009
- 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: 4be0163014e5e90047670a32b2e5169ae952ab03438eeb419a443e8f5ce46065; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:20:25.620Z.