WPR12LA178 · Beechcraft Corporation A36TC
Beechcraft Corporation A36TC · Accident: aircraft servicing event before flight
From Eastern Oregon Regional Airport at Pendleton (PDT) to Hermiston Municipal Airport (HRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA178
- 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
Beechcraft Corporation A36TC
- 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
- N3862C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eastern Oregon Regional Airport at Pendleton (PDT), Pendleton, ORTo Hermiston Municipal Airport (HRI), Hermiston, OR
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Aircraft servicing event
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the airplane had been refueled before the flight and that the fuel had expanded during the day due to heat, which resulted in fuel draining from the vent. The pilot loosened the fuel caps to facilitate draining excess fuel from the tank; however, he forgot to resecure the left-side cap after he finished draining the fuel. Shortly after takeoff, the pilot reported to an air traffic controller that one of the airplane's fuel caps was not secure and requested permission to return to the airport for landing. However, the pilot did not maintain an adequate glidepath during the approach, and the airplane impacted terrain short of the runway. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. During the impact sequence, the pilot's shoulder harness webbing separated, resulting in a serious injury. Examination showed that the webbing met the original load requirements as specified by the manufacturer, and no photodegradation was evident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain an adequate glidepath for landing, which resulted in a collision with terrain short of the runway. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to secure the left-side fuel cap before departure. Contributing to the pilot's injuries was the broken shoulder harness.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA178
- Event ID
- 20120422X32659
- Case number
- WPR12LA178
- 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 2012-04-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 95012706ed0b6df82d04443f95190d96f4f52ab4bee986afef6347451102015e; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:51:32.295Z.