WPR11LA410 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Lake Tahoe Airport (KTVL) to KAPT · Napa, CA
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA410
- 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 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
- N6052W
- Operator
- Mccoy Joseph W
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Lake Tahoe Airport (KTVL), South Lake Tahoe, CATo KAPT · Napa, 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 pattern final
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on final approach to the destination airport, about 1.5 miles from the approach end of the runway, the engine suddenly lost power. The pilot advanced the throttle, checked that the mixture was rich, moved the fuel selector from the left tank to the right tank, and activated the fuel boost pump. The engine did not regain its power, and the pilot executed a gear up landing on a nearby highway. During the landing, the airplane hit a vehicle and the left wing impacted a metal pole and the left fuel tank was breached. First responders reported that there was no indication of fuel in the left tank or leaking from the airplane, and the right tank was about 1/4 full. The propeller blade tips were curled; two blade tips curled forward, and one blade tip curled aft, consistent with a propeller that was under power at the time of contact with the hard, flat roadway. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of fuel starvation, and the pilot’s action of switching to the right fuel tank resulted in the engine regaining power at the same instant that the airplane landed with its gear up on the highway.
Probable cause
The pilot’s mismanagement of the fuel supply, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA410
- Event ID
- 20110828X60215
- Case number
- WPR11LA410
- 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: 19c1d3c1d33dd6e9a56a29b8300b77241273a2a0329a7c544dd10c452a91e9a8; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:40:17.414Z.