ERA12CA059 · Beech F33A
Beech F33A · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Fork Union, VA to Richmond Executive-Chesterfield County Airport (FCI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA059
- 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 F33A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 33
- 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
- N833
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fork Union, VATo Richmond Executive-Chesterfield County Airport (FCI), Chesterfield, VA
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had been fueled and then flown for about 3.25 hours prior to landing at a private airstrip. After dropping off a passenger, the pilot departed from the private airstrip and was en route to a nearby airport when the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot performed a forced landing into a reservoir, which resulted in substantial damage to the ailerons. The airplane was recovered from the reservoir, and about 20 and 12 gallons of fluid were drained from the right and left wing fuel tanks, respectively. The fluid from the right tank was determined to be aviation fuel; however, the fluid from the left tank was determined to be water only and void of fuel. The fuel selector was selected to the left tank. The postaccident examination revealed no other anomalies that would have precluded normal engine operation.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, as a result of the pilot's improper fuel management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA059
- Event ID
- 20111102X44249
- Case number
- ERA12CA059
- 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: ab2f4376c0402f14301ecba0971dda7d45b0447f5502f827e839811877dec5db; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:54:21.871Z.