CHI04LA144 · Beech M35
Beech M35 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Perry County Municipal Airport (TEL) to Tulsa International Airport (TUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA144
- 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 M35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 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
- N693V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Perry County Municipal Airport (TEL), Tell City, INTo Tulsa International Airport (TUL), Tulsa, OK
- 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)
- 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
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Separation
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Fatigue
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, overhaul, 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 a fence and a guy wire during a forced landing following a loss of engine power. The pilot reported he was flying at 8,500 feet mean sea level when the number 2 cylinder departed the engine resulting in a total loss of engine power. He reported that with no airports within gliding distance, he elected to land in a farmer's field where the airplane contacted a fence and a guy wire. The number 2 cylinder and the left magneto were not located after the accident. Half of the crankcase, two fractured cylinder through-bolts, two cylinder through-bolt nuts with pieces of bolts inside, four cylinder hold down nuts with pieces of studs inside, a connecting rod cap with the connecting rod cap bolt, and a connecting rod nut were submitted for a metallurgical examination. The studs and through-bolts were arbitrarily numbered clockwise starting at the upper forward stud. All of the studs and through-bolts that were examined exhibited fatigue cracking with stud 3 exhibiting the largest fatigue region. A lip was observed on the surface of the crankcase which corresponded to the forward edge of the cylinder barrel flange, adjacent to the through-bolts. Linear marks aligned with the axis of the cylinder were observed at the aft side of the cylinder hole corresponding to sliding contact with the cylinder barrel skirt. Sectioning of studs 3 and 4 revealed cracks and/or rolling laps at the thread roots. On stud 4, many of the cracks extended radially then turned. Two studs were removed from cylinder #4 and one of them also displayed sharp thread radii and cracking. This cylinder did not fail. The engine was overhauled on July 6, 2000, at a tach time of 2440.33 hours. The engine had accumulated 194.03 hours since the overhaul.
Probable cause
The improper installation of the cylinder during the engine overhaul which resulted in the fatigue failure of the cylinder studs and through-bolts and the subsequent separation of the cylinder. Factors associated with the accident were the fence and the guy wire which the airplane contacted during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA144
- Event ID
- 20040608X00744
- Case number
- CHI04LA144
- 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: 88553607485d89eebc6d99573c748b55998405e2bc603fb125b59df85e31f11c; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:24:22.617Z.