NYC07FA200 · Beech C24R
Beech C24R · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Ruckel Airport (FL17) to Ruckel Airport (FL17)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07FA200
- 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 C24R
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 24
- 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
- N1802N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ruckel Airport (FL17), Niceville, FLTo Ruckel Airport (FL17), Niceville, FL
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Beech C24R was substantially damaged during the forced landing just after takeoff to the north from the 3,300-foot long, turf runway. The flight was the first flight of the day for the pilot and the airplane. The pilot filled the fuel tanks a few days prior to the accident, and had only flown the airplane once since then, for about 1 1/2 hours. The pilot estimated that that flight consumed approximately 18 of the 57 gallons of usable fuel. During the preflight inspection for the accident flight, the pilot did not look into the wing fuel tanks to check quantity as instructed by the pilot’s operating handbook, since based on his recent fueling and flight history, he "knew the status of the fuel." The takeoff was normal until approximately 80 feet above ground level, when the pilot experienced what he variously described as a "loss of power" or a "loss of airspeed." The airplane descended along the runway, and impacted the clearway, in a roughly wings-level attitude. Fuel purchase records and pilot flight records substantiated the pilot’s estimate of his takeoff fuel. However, only minimal amounts of fuel were detected at the accident site. Examination of the airplane did not reveal any indications of preexisting fuel leaks or other mechanical anomalies. Subsequent to the accident, the engine was successfully test-run.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection of the fuel quantity.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07FA200
- Event ID
- 20071105X01729
- Case number
- NYC07FA200
- 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. 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: 799ea2fc1c0f95f2392c4bd447e1f49cec63d7fcece2fef1369339903b364a7d; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:45:11.922Z.