DEN04LA040 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN) to Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04LA040
- 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
- N8240U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN), Farmington, NMTo Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Stall/spin
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot departed Farmington at approximately 1500 for a 3-hour cross-country flight to Canyonlands, Utah, Page, Arizona, and then back to Farmington. The pilot returned to Farmington at approximately 1800. On his return, the pilot requested from the tower clearance to do a few take-offs and landings. He completed nine take-off and landings. Each landing was a full stop, taxi-back, and subsequent take-off (as required by a local training policy). At approximately 1910, the pilot contacted the tower and asked for clearance to take-off and fly the pattern for a tenth time. At approximately 1915, the pilot reported that he had lost engine power. Witnesses stated that the airplane was flying at a low altitude when its wings began to dip side to side. The airplane then pitched nose-up, rolled over, dove, and struck the roof of a police station. An examination of the airplane revealed approximately 4 gallons of fuel in the right wing tank, fuel in the fuel strainer, and no fuel in the lines. No other anomalies were found.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper in-flight planning/decision making and his failure to maintain adequate airspeed which resulted in fuel starvation/exhaustion and a stall spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04LA040
- Event ID
- 20040202X00139
- Case number
- DEN04LA040
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-01-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b52bbca7b78bd6befab891f648a21f461d1e80412c63f5bac99e3f2c6d6d4ef4; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:19:30.791Z.