SEA05LA110 · Beech A-36
Beech A-36 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Tacoma Narrows Airport (KTIW) to Tacoma Narrows Airport (KTIW)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05LA110
- 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 A-36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft A-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
- N9017V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tacoma Narrows Airport (KTIW), Tacoma, WATo Tacoma Narrows Airport (KTIW)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fuel injection control/system › Malfunction
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After flying in the local area for about 20 minutes, the pilot entered the VFR traffic pattern, and after turning on base leg the aircraft's engine suddenly lost all power. He was therefore forced to execute a power-off landing in an open field, where the aircraft's nose gear encountered some soft terrain and collapsed. A post-accident inspection determined that there was sufficient uncontaminated 100LL fuel on board. During a series of test runs, the engine ran extremely rough at rpm's below 1,500, and it quit a number of times during the run. The engine smoothed out some when the fuel boost pump was turned on to the low position, and smoothed out even more when the pump was turned to the high position. The un-metered fuel pressure was measured, and although it was lower than the specification directed, it was not low enough to account for the very rough running engine. At the end of the series of test runs, the spark plugs were removed, and their white ashy color confirmed that the engine was running extremely lean. Further flow tests and inspections were performed on the fuel system components after they were removed from the aircraft, but the results of these tests did not reveal any anomalies that would be expected to cause the engine to run rough or quit while on a reduced power approach. In addition, the fuel pump was tested to ensure that there was no air leaking past the shaft seal, and the results of that test was negative. At the completion of the testing/inspection process, it could not be clearly determined what was causing the engine's fuel system to run so lean.
Probable cause
The malfunction of the fuel injection control system, for undetermined reasons, while the aircraft was on base leg for a full-stop landing. Factors include soft terrain in the area where the pilot found it necessary to perform a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05LA110
- Event ID
- 20050608X00738
- Case number
- SEA05LA110
- 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 2005-05-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3cda228dc40a9ef23af6b13193b8d5fd48d6960fef69aa1a607b61b6fa5ea3cd; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:50:27.849Z.