CHI08CA175 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET) to Pontiac Municipal Airport (PNT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08CA175
- 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
- N6051M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET), Detroit, MITo Pontiac Municipal Airport (PNT), Pontiac, IL
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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 (total)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During initial descent the pilot selected the right fuel tank for the practice instrument approach procedure. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time. The pilot performed a procedure turn to align with the instrument approach. The engine lost power while turning inbound onto the final approach course. The airplane was at 2,300 feet mean sea level (~1,600 feet above ground level) when the engine lost power. The pilot switched back to the left fuel tank but the engine did not respond. The pilot performed a forced landing onto Interstate Highway 55. During the landing rollout the right wing impacted a mile-marker signpost. A post-accident investigation showed that the left and right fuel tanks were approximately 1/8 and 1/2 full, respectively. No anomalies were encountered during a post accident engine test run. The engine started without hesitation and responded to throttle inputs. The engine ran without difficulty on each fuel tank for a period of 4 minutes, on each magneto individually, and with the electric fuel pump turned off.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. Contributing to the accident was the highway signpost that the airplane impacted during the landing rollout.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08CA175
- Event ID
- 20080811X01211
- Case number
- CHI08CA175
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 9818d35df6771c24756ce09e2b9b6a728d64a44fd0e632ecca0b6f8a373a65b1; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:02:22.786Z.