CEN10FA180 · Beech B36TC
Poelking Air Beech B36TC · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY) to Dupage Airport (DPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10FA180
- 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
- 2 · 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 B36TC
- 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
- N4BA
- Operator
- Poelking Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY), Dayton, OHTo Dupage Airport (DPA), West Chicago, IL
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Approximately 1 minute after takeoff, as the airplane was about 1 mile southwest of the airport, the pilot reported an engine failure to air traffic controllers and initiated a return to the airport. One witness, located about 1 mile west of the airport, reported that the sound of the engine changed abruptly; noting that the engine seemed to lose power completely. Another witness, located near the airport, observed the airplane approach from the west and turn to align with the downwind runway. During the turn, the left wingtip struck the ground and the airplane impacted short of the runway. A postimpact fire ensued. Although the pilot initiated a return to the airport, an interstate highway and an open grass area short of the runway were both potentially available for an emergency landing. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the No. 1 (aft) main crankshaft bearing failed due to unknown circumstances. The progressive failure of the bearing likely precipitated secondary failures of the crankcase through-bolt and the fuel pump coupling, which resulted in a complete loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The complete loss of engine power due to failure of the No. 1 main bearing, and the secondary failure of a crankcase through-bolt and the fuel pump drive coupling. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to attempt a return to the airport for a downwind forced landing, despite having an interstate highway and an open grass area short of the runway as available emergency landing sites.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10FA180
- Event ID
- 20100402X15542
- Case number
- CEN10FA180
- 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: 66d54be9df590d1ac2b23aec0cef450a1db41ce97caed18ce4b7ef0d155b503b; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:44:21.203Z.