DEN04FA109 · Beech 58P
Beech 58P · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL) to Eppley Airfield (OMA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04FA109
- 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
- 3 · 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 58P
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 58
- 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
- N69CL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL), Loveland, COTo Eppley Airfield (OMA), Omaha, NE
- 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 · climb to 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot obtained a "standard weather briefing," filed an instrument flight rules flight plan, and took off. Four minutes later, after several routine radio communications, the controller issued the pilot a radar vector. He did not acknowledge. The controller repeated the vector. There was a squelch break and in the background, a noise and tone could be heard. The pilot reported, "We have got some sort of malfunction going on here." Witnesses reported hearing an engine "sputtering" and losing power. The airplane emerged from a low overcast in a flat counterclockwise spin. The airplane impacted a street and driveway in a residential subdivision. On-scene investigation disclosed the landing gear and flaps were retracted. Both elevators were deflected up and jammed by impact. Subsequent examination of the airplane revealed the cockpit fuel selector handles were in the LEFT TANK-LEFT ENGINE/RIGHT TANK-RIGHT ENGINE positions. The left and right fuel selector valves, located in the wheel wells, were OFF and ON, respectively. Analysis of the ATC communications tape revealed two engines operating until the pilot reported the "malfunction," then which only one engine sound could be heard. A steady 1,000-hertz tone, similar to an aural stall warning system, was also heard. Both engines, turbochargers, and propellers were later disassembled and examined. No anomalies were noted. Neither propeller was feathered. On the day before the accident, the pilot had undergone recurrent ground and flight training, a flight review, and an instrument proficiency check in the airplane. Flight time totaled 5.3 hours.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power for undetermined reasons, and the pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed which resulted in a stall/spin. Clouds and the pilot's diverted attention were contributing factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04FA109
- Event ID
- 20040730X01111
- Case number
- DEN04FA109
- 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: 5ce45aa84592bec53ab59a5675055e505ff3bf2b301096a816feb868ed6c1d8c; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:24:32.961Z.