NYC08LA306 · Beech G35
Beech G35 · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Middlesboro-Bell County Airport (1A6) to Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08LA306
- 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 G35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N4403D
- Operator
- Brown David G
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Middlesboro-Bell County Airport (1A6), Middlesboro, KYTo Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX), Knoxville, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 departed with 15-20 gallons of fuel for the approximately 1 hour round-trip flight to a nearby airport. The outbound leg of the trip was the airplane's first flight since an annual inspection. Prior to the inspection, the airplane was not flown much and the fuel in the airplane was "old." The pilot performed a pre-flight inspection during which he sumped the fuel tanks and noted no contamination. During the return leg of the trip, as the airplane turned onto final approach for the airport, the engine lost power, which "sounded like the airplane quit getting gas to the engine." When the pilot realized he could not make it to the runway, he prepared for a forced landing to a river. The airplane "stalled" above the water, and after it touched down, both occupants egressed and swam to shore. Examination of the airplane after recovery from the river revealed both fuel tanks were empty. The pilot reported that the airplane burned approximately 10 gallons of fuel per hour; however, the airplane's Owner's Manual stated the engine consumed 13.6 – 14.1 gallons per hour.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel consumption calculations which resulted in total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08LA306
- Event ID
- 20081003X17835
- Case number
- NYC08LA306
- 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: beed7cadf57b50259e2eecace1bb50883f4bdf678b0f5641243d3f9199586ac3; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:19:11.154Z.