FTW04IA134 · Beech A23A
Beech A23A · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Buffalo Airport (1E7) to Hale County Airport (PVW)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04IA134
- 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
- Incident
- 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 A23A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 23
- 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
- N6943Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buffalo Airport (1E7), Amarillo, TXTo Hale County Airport (PVW), Plainview, TX
- 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
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 1,911-hour certificated flight instructor reported that while in cruise flight, the propeller separated from the engine. The instructor stated that just prior to the propeller separating from the engine, he noticed a light oil spray covering the windscreen. The instructor then took control of the airplane and executed a forced landing to a nearby airport without further incident. The owner of the airplane reported that he was not aware of any anomalies leading to the failure of the propeller assembly, there were no pre-existing vibrations, no propeller changes, and to his knowledge, "no prior incursion or indications of this occurrence." Examination of the engine revealed that the crankshaft separated aft of the propeller flange. A metallurgical examination of the fractured area of the crankshaft revealed the fracture (consistent with fatigue) within the nitrided layer of the crankshaft originated from a small circumferential crack (consistent with overload) and progressed to the identification stamp. The origination from the original crack is undetermined.
Probable cause
The in-flight separation of the crankshaft for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04IA134
- Event ID
- 20040525X00664
- Case number
- FTW04IA134
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-05-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fea8d234cf0c3d21d948a5572b2fcb4ca03a37fc9217028e8f30614b18dc0f20; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:30:37.507Z.