LAX05LA279 · Beech 35-A33
Beech 35-A33 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Siskiyou County Airport (SIY) to Alturas Municipal Airport (AAT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA279
- 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 35-A33
- 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
- N337Z
- Operator
- Robert A. Paananen · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Siskiyou County Airport (SIY), Montague, CATo Alturas Municipal Airport (AAT), Alturas, 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 · descent
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- 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 airplane impacted terrain and a fence during a forced landing following a loss of engine power. According to the pilot, he checked the fuel tanks prior to departing on the flight and noted that the right main fuel tank was full, the left main tank was "partial", both auxiliary tanks were full and the tip tanks were empty. He flew the airplane to the destination airport utilizing the left fuel tank. As the flight neared the destination airport, the pilot switched the fuel tank selector from the left to the right tank. The engine began sputtering and lost power. The pilot turned on the fuel boost pump but the engine power did not improve. During the forced landing at the destination airport, the airplane landed short, bounced in the air and impacted a fence before coming to rest. According to a mechanic who examined the airplane after the accident, the left main fuel tank was empty and the right main fuel tank was almost full.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undertermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA279
- Event ID
- 20051019X01692
- Case number
- LAX05LA279
- 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: 8095196001167ddf0c2db4327753d64b609c3a3ab9ae895162a6e02d0583b687; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:55:07.506Z.