CEN09LA274 · Beech 35-C33
Beech 35-C33 · Accident: fuel exhaustion during initial climb
From Addison Airport (ADS) to Hicks Air Field (T67)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA274
- 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 35-C33
- 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
- N528BM
- Operator
- Martin Bryan S
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Addison Airport (ADS), Addison, TXTo Hicks Air Field (T67), Hicks Airfield, TX
- 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The two commercial pilots (one of which was the owner) flew to the accident location and dropped off a passenger. Prior to the first flight the owner pilot had checked the fuel levels and determined there was enough fuel to make their desired flights. Neither pilot ensured the fuel selector was selecting the fullest tank prior to the second takeoff. On departure and about 200 feet above the ground the engine began sputtering and then lost power. The pilots switched fuel tanks in-flight, but the engine did not restart. The airplane landed short of the runway, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane and serious injuries to both pilots. Examination of the airplane revealed the right main tank was empty and the fuel selector was selected to the left main tank.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power in flight due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilots' inadequate fuel management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA274
- Event ID
- 20090504X40445
- Case number
- CEN09LA274
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-05-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4ca56ed1ae4cb8a10e48d6f9193e08903d1756805deeb29eb915275caf1b8ef2; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:00:53.240Z.