CEN12CA079 · Beech 95-B55 (T42A)
South Delta Aviation Beech 95-B55 (T42A) · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Thompson-Robbins Airport (HEE) to San Antonio International Airport (SAT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12CA079
- 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 95-B55 (T42A)
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 55
- 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
- N8188R
- Operator
- South Delta Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Thompson-Robbins Airport (HEE), West Helena, ARTo San Antonio International Airport (SAT), San Antonio, TX
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, after 2.25 hours of cross country flight, the left engine lost power and began to surge. The pilot contacted air traffic control, declared an emergency, and asked the controller for vectors to the nearest airport. During the descent toward an abandoned airport, the left engine continued to surge, and the pilot adjusted the mixture controls to full rich on both engines, turned on the fuel boost pumps, checked the magnetos, and checked the fuel valves. As the airplane descended through 3,000 feet mean sea level, the right engine surged and lost power. The pilot assessed that he could not make it to the airport and decided to land on a farm road. While turning from base leg to final approach for the road, the pilot lowered the landing gear and assessed that he would not be able to reach the road. Subsequently, the airplane hit the tops of trees about 50 feet from the road and descended to the ground with the main landing gear touching down first. As the nose landing gear touched the ground, the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted, resulting in substantial damage to the front of the fuselage and the rudder. Emergency responders to the accident scene reported that they did not see or smell the presence of fuel around the wreckage. An FAA inspector who responded to the accident site did not find evidence of fuel in the wreckage or the surrounding area. After the accident, the pilot initially said that he ran out of fuel and that he was not certain of the amount of fuel that was in the airplane when he departed on the flight. Later, the pilot reported that, based on a visual inspection, he estimated he had about 136 gallons of fuel on board prior to commencing the flight.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power from both engines, which resulted from fuel exhaustion due to the pilot’s inadequate pre-flight preparation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12CA079
- Event ID
- 20111123X33825
- Case number
- CEN12CA079
- 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: daa4275cddb74eede7393e7b105ca7d6a2dfa4b9d23683048042351bf61f04e1; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:57:40.783Z.