DEN06FA091 · Beech A36TC
Beech A36TC · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Garfield County Regional Airport (RIL) to Montrose Regional Airport (MTJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06FA091
- 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
- 2 · 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 A36TC
- 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
- N1800Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Garfield County Regional Airport (RIL), Rifle, COTo Montrose Regional Airport (MTJ), Montrose, CO
- 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 · VFR pattern downwind
- 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; Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
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, who had recently purchased the airplane, was receiving type-specific flight instruction to comply with insurance policy requirements, and had accumulated 6 hours of instruction. When the lineman checked the fuel tanks on the morning of the accident, they were half full. The pilots declined his offer to refuel. The airplane had been aloft for about 1 hour, 15 minutes, when it arrived at another airport and made 2 full-stop landings. Numerous witnesses reported hearing the engine "sputtering and coughing" and seeing the extended landing gear being retracted before the airplane struck a parked semi truck in a residential neighborhood. It exploded on impact and both the airplane and semi truck were consumed by fire. The fuel selector valve was found positioned on the left tank. The airplane was equipped with standard fuel tanks. According to the Beech A36 "Pilot's Operating Handbook," each wing tank holds 40 gallons of fuel, of which 37 gallons are useable. Performance charts indicate each takeoff and climbout would consume approximately 3.5 gallons of fuel (10.5 gallons). The airplane took off and made two takeoffs and landings prior to the loss of power. The airplane had been aloft for approximately 1.25 hours. Cruise performance charts for 10,000 feet (+20 degrees C. ISA) vary between 9.5 and 14.0 gph (gallons per hour), depending on leaning technique.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/decision by not having the airplane refueled prior to takeoff, and allowing the engine to be starved of fuel because he failed to switch the fuel selector valve. A contributing factor was the flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06FA091
- Event ID
- 20060711X00908
- Case number
- DEN06FA091
- 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: 05dc564caaa4e77bb7ab7540ec6ea50e5bace7891d286337f2a7a00a527f75b2; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:13:01.519Z.