LAX08LA027 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) to Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA027
- 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 A36
- 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
- N3627B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, NVTo Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT), Phoenix, AZ
- 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 · cruise
- 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 (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Engine assembly, camshaft › Failure
- Engine assembly, camshaft › Fatigue
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 lost engine power while in cruise flight on a dark night. The pilot had been in contact with the local area Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility and reported the situation to the controller. The pilot indicated that he was in-between airports and did not want to risk a turn back to the departure airport due to the dark night and mountainous terrain conditions. After reporting the power loss, the pilot lost radio contact with the controller and decided to attempt a landing on the desert floor. The pilot landed the airplane gear up and struck desert shrubbery, which caused structural damage to the airplane. The pilot stated that the engine sounded as if it had lost a cylinder or a valve and it was running "weakly." A review of the airplane’s logbooks revealed that the airplane had flown 14 hours since the last 100-hour/annual inspections. The factory-remanufactured engine had been installed on June 15, 2001, and had a total time of 717 hours. An engine teardown was performed and investigators noted that several camshaft gear teeth were missing, some of which were found in the oil sump. A metallurgical examination of the camshaft gear and teeth revealed signatures consistent with normal wear. Many of the surfaces on the camshaft gear had been damaged due to continued operation after the teeth separation. A fracture surface at the site of a missing tooth showed evidence of fatigue initiating at the surface. The metallurgist noted surface marks at the root on both sides of each tooth. Hardness was tested between the gear teeth on both parts and was found to meet component specifications based on the R30N scale.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power as a result of a fatigue failure of the camshaft gear teeth. Contributing to the accident were the dark night lighting conditions and the rough, uneven terrain the airplane encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA027
- Event ID
- 20071119X01814
- Case number
- LAX08LA027
- 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 2007-11-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f7aba5463801fb13373de5cdf75fe1e5b1471ab38337463400cbeb215cc310f6; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:17:17.865Z.