LAX05LA012 · Beech C24R
Beech C24R · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Healdsburg Municipal Airport (O31) to O48 · Little River, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA012
- 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 C24R
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 24
- 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
- N18942
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Healdsburg Municipal Airport (O31), Healdsburg, CATo O48 · Little River, 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 (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
- Fuel starvation
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, delayed
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 impacted vineyard crops during a forced landing following a loss of engine power while in cruise flight. The flight was intended to be a 30-minute trip between local airports. The pilot had the left fuel tank selected at the time of the power loss, and turned on the boost pump and selected the right fuel tank. The pilot was able to obtain a surge of power momentarily, but nothing more. He then setup for landing at the nearest airport. Upon noting his glide ratio would not allow them to reach the airport, he concentrated on landing in the vineyard. The airplane impacted the crops and was arrested by the crop trellis wires. Post-accident examination of the engine revealed no anomalies that would have prevented its normal operation. The left fuel tank contained 1 gallon of fuel and 11 gallons were in the right fuel tank. When electrical power was applied to the system, the fuel gages read values consistent with the fuel quantities found in the tanks. The unusable fuel quantity for each tank is 1.3 gallons.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power due to fuel starvation from the pilot's inadequate fuel system management and his delay in selecting the fullest fuel tank.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA012
- Event ID
- 20041103X01752
- Case number
- LAX05LA012
- 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 2004-10-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 883ab831a05faaf554f479d4ef574e7bb8dc6509b65dac62ff1de7bda63f59a2; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:35:16.661Z.