WPR10FA056 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Brackett Field (POC) to Van Nuys Airport (VNY)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10FA056
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N17803
- Operator
- David E. Flotho · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brackett Field (POC), La Verne, CATo Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 15 minutes after takeoff, witnesses observed the airplane make a forced landing adjacent to a railroad track. The airplane touched down partially on the track and bounced several times before coming to rest about 500 yards beyond the initial point of impact. The witnesses reported that the engine was at idle power during the shallow approach. The fuselage and engine area were thermally damaged and the pilot suffered fatal injuries due to a fire.
A postaccident examination revealed that a section of the upper left cowling had localized fire damage that was not attributed to the postimpact fire. The left cowling was placed in its normal position just forward of the airplane fuselage. A matching thermal pattern was noted in a small section of the airplane skin just aft of the firewall. Further examination revealed that the left exhaust system transition pipe and V-band clamp had separated from the engine and that the V-band clamp exhibited evidence of corrosion. A metallurgical examination of the V-band clamp revealed that it had fractured through the strap adjacent to a gap between the V-shaped clamping segments. The separation was a result of an overstress fracture of the strap, which was already weakened due to localized oxidation. It is likely that the failure of this clamp resulted in the initiation of an in-flight fire in the engine compartment area.
Probable cause
Failure of the exhaust band V-clamp during cruise flight, which resulted in an in-flight fire and a subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10FA056
- Event ID
- 20091117X01842
- Case number
- WPR10FA056
- 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 2009-11-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 01dead0024e4250a119c8d038b10b6617525a9aebb4f73b4a8c235990555b087; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:34:01.880Z.