WPR10FA158 · Beech K35
Beech K35 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Queens Creek, AZ to Henderson Executive Airport (HND)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10FA158
- 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 K35
- 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
- N5392E
- Operator
- Brett Beukens
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Queens Creek, AZTo Henderson Executive Airport (HND), Henderson, NV
- 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 · 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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 pilot was on a cross-country flight to an airport that he had previously visited several times. Radar data indicated that he was flying northwest. The pilot contacted airport personnel 15 miles short of his intended destination, stating that he was low on fuel and that he needed to land immediately. Airport personnel informed him that runway 15 was active. The pilot reported that he did not see the airport and asked for help locating it. About 4 minutes 20 seconds later, the pilot requested a straight-in landing and indicated that he was gliding. Witnesses in another aircraft reported that they saw the airplane strike power lines and then descend directly to the ground east of the airport while on final approach for the runway. Inspection of the wreckage found that approximately 5 gallons of usable fuel remained in the left main tank. The remainder of the fuel tanks were either breached or contained less than usable amounts of fuel. Investigators found no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation of the airframe or engine. The sun was 16 degrees above the horizon directly in the direction of the runway and glare likely hindered the pilot from seeing the wires.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilot's inadequate fuel management; also causal was his subsequent failure to maintain clearance from power lines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10FA158
- Event ID
- 20100315X05243
- Case number
- WPR10FA158
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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 2010-03-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 560bb4f9197f78fd4675370e4713921c0108bc24859f83ade87d10cf4f57c2ee; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:43:00.205Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Henderson Executive Airport (HND) is in Nevada; record location Boulder City, NV and narrative crash east of the destination airport corroborate.