FLIGHT FINDINGSAVIATION OCCURRENCE MAP
Back to map

CEN10CA517 · Beech D35

1 Sept 2010 · Guymon, OK, United States

Beech D35 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach

From Aero Valley Airport (52F) to Guymon Municipal Airport (GUY)

Report a problem

Event

NTSB case
CEN10CA517
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
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 D35

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
N3446B
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Aero Valley Airport (52F), Roanoke, TXTo Guymon Municipal Airport (GUY), Guymon, OK
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
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
Substantial

Cause areas

  • Not determined › Not determined

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot reported that he departed on a cross-country flight with 49 gallons of fuel on-board the airplane. About 3 hours later, as he approached his destination airport, the airplane’s engine surged followed by a total loss of power. The pilot suspected that the engine had experienced vapor lock/fuel blockage and attempted to resolve the problem by selecting each of the airplane’s three fuel tanks and affirming that the mixture control was in the full rich position. The airplane continued to descend and the pilot elected to conduct a forced landing at his destination airport. The airplane did not have sufficient altitude and the pilot made a hard landing diagonally across the runway. During the landing, the airplane’s nose gear collapsed and the right wing was substantially damaged. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector examined the airplane on-site and reported that it appeared the underside of the fuselage had blue stains on it akin to the coloration of fuel; he noted that the fuel caps had duct tape on them. The inspector was unable to determine if the airplane’s fuel tanks contained fuel. The reason for the loss of engine power was not determined.

Probable cause

The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN10CA517
Event ID
20100903X41225
Case number
CEN10CA517
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: 7a8cc843f7cead1a51f9e8d79e34311c4ef70439e011c188bd85b599043b0093; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:05:42.965Z.