WPR09FA347 · Raytheon Aircraft Company G36
Carpet Pros Raytheon Aircraft Company G36 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Jack Northrop Field Hawthorne Municipal Airport (HHR) to Jack Northrop Field Hawthorne Municipal Airport (HHR)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09FA347
- 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
- 3 · 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
Raytheon Aircraft Company G36
- 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
- N618MW
- Operator
- Carpet Pros
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jack Northrop Field Hawthorne Municipal Airport (HHR), Hawthorne, CATo Jack Northrop Field Hawthorne Municipal Airport (HHR), Hawthorne, CA
- 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 go-around
- 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 control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on final approach during the accident landing, the pilot informed air traffic control tower personnel that he was going to perform a go-around but gave no explanation for the maneuver. Witnesses observed the airplane climbing westbound ”belching” black smoke, then the engine stopped. When the airplane was about midfield, they saw it turn left and then back to the right and descend out of sight. The airplane impacted the roof and a vertical wall of a five-story building before coming to rest in an adjacent parking lot.
Postaccident examination of the engine’s spark plugs and cylinders indicated that the engine was running with an overly rich fuel/air mixture, which was also evident from the witness statements of the black exhaust emanating from the airplane. The electric fuel boost pump switch is located next to the landing gear selection handle. According to the G36 Pilot Operating Handbook, the engine’s electric boost pump provides pressure for starting and emergency operation only. The handbook cautions that use of the electric boost pump during normal operations can result in an overly rich fuel/air mixture, possibly flooding the engine. If either pilot inadvertently activated the fuel boost pump while attempting to retract the landing gear during the go-around, it could have resulted in a temporarily rich fuel/air mixture, reducing the available engine power and possibly distracting the pilots during the go-around. Although, the examination revealed that the electric fuel boost pump system switch was in the “OFF” position and that the pump was not operating at the time of impact, it is possible that the pilots recognized that the electric fuel boost pump system was on during the go-around and switched it off before the crash. The position of the switch and the reduced engine power likely distracted the pilot, who did not maintain adequate airspeed during the go-around, which resulted in a loss of control.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain an adequate airspeed during a go-around, which resulted in a loss of airplane control. Contributing to the accident was the inadvertent activation of the fuel boost pump during the attempted go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09FA347
- Event ID
- 20090715X04106
- Case number
- WPR09FA347
- 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: bbf557ad00e9202d2dd70927141d3db82a2465eeb91a3c9f06a38cef126504fe; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:22:02.070Z.