DFW05IA048 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Incident: loss of engine power en route
From Diamondhead Airport (66Y) to Center Municipal Airport (F17)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05IA048
- 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 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
- N920GL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Diamondhead Airport (66Y), Diamondhead, MSTo Center Municipal Airport (F17), Center, 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Miscellaneous, engine pre-ignition and/or detonation › Overtemperature
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 15,000-hour commercial pilot reported that while he was in cruise flight at 12,000 feet mean sea level (msl) during an IFR cross country flight, he began to smell smoke and noticed the engine began to surge. After requesting a lower altitude, the air traffic controller advised him of the nearest airport. During the descent, at an altitude of approximately 9,000 feet msl, "the engine lost oil pressure" and the pilot shut the engine down using the mixture control. The "engine continued to turn over" as he heard "several loud explosions and observed fireballs at the propeller hub" before the propeller stopped turning. After realizing he was unable to make it to the airport, the pilot elected to land in a field approximately 1/2 mile south of his intended airport. After maneuvering the airplane under a set of power lines, the pilot landed in an open field. A detailed examination of the engine was completed at the facilities of the engine manufacturer. The examination revealed that the crankshaft and counterweights assembly exhibited lubrication distress of a varying degree to all connecting rod journals and bearings. The number six piston head exhibited detonation and pre-ignition damage. The examination concluded that a turbo-normalizing system had been installed and the installation of a turbo-normalizing system on an engine originally certificated as a normally aspirated model containing high compression pistons is contrary to the recommendations in TCM Service Bulletin M64-18 and can reduce the engine's detonation margins.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to pre-ignition and detonation. Contributing factors were the lack of suitable terrain available for the forced landing and the unapproved installation of a turbocharger.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05IA048
- Event ID
- 20050103X00001
- Case number
- DFW05IA048
- 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: b13913365815f6dfcd12dc76f9d0b52729b2739f14b5b34f0e9a62e686513c47; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:23:38.677Z.