ATL06CA004 · Beech F33A
Beech F33A · Accident: loss of engine power during an emergency descent
From Rogers Municipal Airport-Carter Field (ROG) to Charles W. Baker Airport (2M8)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL06CA004
- 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 F33A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 33
- 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
- N273PS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rogers Municipal Airport-Carter Field (ROG), Rodgers, ARTo Charles W. Baker Airport (2M8), Millington, TN
- 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
- Emergency 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
- 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
- Fuel starvation; Stall
- 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
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
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 stated he crossed over the destination airport at mid field and entered a right downwind for landing to runway 36 when the engine lost power. Another airplane was on base leg for landing. The pilot elected to make a forced landing in the grass next to runway 36. He immediately switched the fuel tank from the left main fuel tank to the right fuel tank and attempted an engine restart without success. The pilot stated he misjudged his landing distance by about 150 feet and failed to maintain airspeed on final. The airplane stalled and collided with the ground on the nose gear. Examination of the airplane after the accident revealed the left fuel quantity indicator indicated empty. The fuel tank was not ruptured and no fuel was present in the fuel tank. The pilot's Operating Handbook states the airplane has three gallons of unusable fuel in each fuel tank. Three gallons of fuel was drained from the left main fuel tank. The fuel line was disconnected at the fuel flow divider, and the fuel line to the inlet side of the engine driven fuel pump was disconnected. No fuel was present. The nose section of the airplane was positioned in a brace and the airplane was tied down with a cargo strap. The engine was started and ran smoothly with the fuel selector selected on the right main fuel tank.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management resulting in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. A factor in the accident was the pilot's failure to maintain airspeed and misjudged distance to the forced landing area resulting in a stall and collision with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL06CA004
- Event ID
- 20051031X01759
- Case number
- ATL06CA004
- 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: b192f26db3d783db0b2314621a28e55f74aabfa31306f4d259d522fefa656159; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:18:14.660Z.