Executive Airlink Beech C90A accident
Beech C90A · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Ocean Reef Club Airport (07FA) to Orlando Executive Airport (ORL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09FA304
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 C90A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 90
- 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
- N8001V
- Operator
- Executive Airlink
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ocean Reef Club Airport (07FA), Key Largo, FLTo Orlando Executive Airport (ORL), Orlando, 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · descent
- 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 starvation
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Approximately 4 days before the accident the left boost pump was noted by the accident pilot to be intermittent. Maintenance checked the pump but could not duplicate the intermittent discrepancy and the airplane was approved for return to service. Shortly after takeoff during the accident flight while operating with the crossfeed switch in the "Auto" position, the left boost pump became inoperative and the "Fuel Crossfeed" annunciator correctly illuminated alerting the flightcrew that the right boost pump was supplying fuel from the right fuel tanks to both engines. An adequate supply of fuel was available in the left fuel tanks which could have directly supplied the left engine had the flightcrew closed the crossfeed valve, but the pilot in command (PIC) continued the flight with fuel only supplied from the right fuel tanks. While descending, both engines lost power due to fuel starvation. The PIC maneuvered the airplane for a forced landing in an open field and landed hard, bounced, and came to rest upright. Postaccident inspection of the airplane revealed internal components of the left boost pump were worn resulting in an inoperative boost pump and the right no fuel transfer time delay relay was inoperative due to a broken terminal at the relay. Had the right no fuel transfer annunciation system been operative, it is likely that the flightcrew would have diverted earlier for an uneventful landing at a suitable airport. While inspection of the electrical wiring and components in the cockpit (includes the fuel control panel) occurs during a Phase 3 inspection required to be performed every 800 hours, the failures of the wires and terminal at the right no fuel transfer time delay relay was due to bending which occurred with repeated opening and closing of the panel. Postaccident inspection of 2 production airplanes of the same make and model revealed discrepancies with chafing of the relay wires against a nearby structural member.
Probable cause
The failure of the flightcrew to recognize that both engines were being supplied fuel only from the right wing fuel tanks resulting in loss of power in both engine due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident were the inoperative the left auxiliary fuel pump, the inoperative right no fuel transfer time delay relay, and inadequate manufacturing of the electrical wires associated with the left and right no fuel transfer time delay relays.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09FA304
- Event ID
- 20090525X51624
- Case number
- ERA09FA304
- 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. 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: b897a80579fa0391848095cd52fcfde507e02500ca718a6cf4e788f141100c5c; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:09:47.049Z.