LAX04LA016 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL) to Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA016
- 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 A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N700TT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL), Fullerton, CATo Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT), Fresno, CA
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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
- Turbine assembly, turbine wheel › Fatigue
- Turbine assembly, turbine wheel › Fractured
- Turbine assembly, turbine wheel › Overtemperature
- Turbine assembly, turbine wheel › Separation
- Unknown › Starting procedure, improper
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 power lines during an off-airport forced landing following a loss of engine power. While in cruise at 10,500 feet, the pilot heard a bang, and the engine lost power. He declared an emergency, and attempted to glide to a nearby airport; however, he was unable to make it to the runway. The airplane collided with power lines and fell to the ground about 4 miles west of the airport. The N1 and N2 shafting systems were bound up and would not move. The upper magnetic chip detector was free of metal, but it did contain coke. There was slight varnishing of the anode and cathode. The lower magnetic chip detector contained a substantial amount of metallic particles, subsequently identified as material from the No. 5 bearing. The particles did bridge the gap from anode to cathode. A detailed examination of the engine determined that three sections of the first stage turbine wheel separated. The stub shaft also fractured and separated, and a portion of the fractured tie bolt remained in the wheel. Metallurgical examination of the first and second stage turbine wheels found evidence of gamma prime solutioning and localized melting of the second stage turbine wheel airfoil tips, indicating temperature exposures above 2,100 degrees Farenheit, a temperature range outside the normal operating envelope of these wheels. This exposure to elevated temperatures resulted in rim separation due to thermal fatigue initiating at the rim followed by accelerated interdendritic creep crack growth. No evidence of an oil fire was associated with the first stage wheel separation. The composition, hardness, and microstructure of the first stage turbine wheel were as required by the engineering drawing. The No. 5 bearing exhibited heat distress, but the cause of this could not be conclusively determined. According to Rolls-Royce Allison, the internal evidence of excessive thermal damage to the first and second stage turbine wheels was consistent with prior examples of known hot starts.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to thermal fatigue failure of the first stage turbine wheel resulting in release of a section of its rim. The thermal fatigue was due to the engine exceeding its temperature limits during one or more start cycles.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA016
- Event ID
- 20031022X01796
- Case number
- LAX04LA016
- 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: 75551f6fdc56859ef7044cdf0d3ff39f96df776c7036e2cf02e12445cfd28c43; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:19:50.807Z.