WPR12LA128 · Beech 76
Beech 76 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Visalia Municipal Airport (VIS) to McClellan Airfield (MCC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA128
- 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 76
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 76
- 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
- N6697L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Visalia Municipal Airport (VIS), Visalia, CATo McClellan Airfield (MCC), Sacramento, 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he began his descent from 3,000 feet mean sea level (msl) by lowering the landing gear and reducing the power on both engines. When the airplane reached an altitude of about 1,200 feet msl, the left engine lost power. The pilot was about to feather the left propeller when engine power was momentarily restored followed by both engines losing power. He selected a “dark space” on the ground and performed a forced landing. During the landing, the airplane collided with a ditch and a fence.
Postaccident examination of the engines revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. About the time of the accident, a weather station about 4 nautical miles from the accident site reported a temperature of 52 degrees F and dew point of 45 degrees F. These weather conditions were conducive to the formation of serious carburetor icing at cruise and glide power settings. The pilot did not report applying carburetor heat when he initiated the descent, during descent, or following the loss of engine power. Additionally, the pilot stated that he believed carburetor icing caused both engines to lose power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to carburetor icing, and the pilot's failure to use carburetor heat during descent while operating in an area conducive to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA128
- Event ID
- 20120311X02621
- Case number
- WPR12LA128
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-03-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c4d6265fe3537b0643fcf9cab53883fe9faa3260c6626dde3bcdc0dc9b236768; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:26:27.257Z.