ERA12LA336 · Beech A36TC
L & M Trucking Beech A36TC · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Harnett Regional Jetport Airport (HRJ) to Darlington County Airport (UDG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA336
- 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 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
- N2WZ
- Operator
- L & M Trucking
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harnett Regional Jetport Airport (HRJ), Erwin, NCTo Darlington County Airport (UDG), Darlington, SC
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 control in flight
- 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
After what he described as an uneventful engine run-up, the pilot took off from the 5,000-foot-long runway. The pilot stated that when the airplane reached an altitude of about 50 feet, he retracted the landing gear; the engine lost partial power. The airplane yawed to the left and touched down again, impacting a thicket. According to a witness who observed the takeoff, the engine power never decreased until the engine stopped suddenly upon impacting the ground.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the No. 4 cylinder exhaust valve springs had fractured in fatigue. Detailed examination of the springs showed that the fatigue cracking likely originated from one or more of the iron oxide (rust) pits present on the surface of the springs. The springs had been installed in the engine about 1 year before the accident flight. According to the mechanic who installed the springs, he had retrieved them from a similar engine’s cylinder that was removed from another airplane; there was no documentation of the springs’ service history or serviceability.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power shortly after takeoff due to fatigue-fractured exhaust valve springs. Contributing to the accident was the mechanic’s decision to install exhaust valve springs with an unknown service history in the engine’s No. 4 cylinder.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA336
- Event ID
- 20120514X32313
- Case number
- ERA12LA336
- 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: 658a1cafd754f0873c8589e5323a27a1527cc67d8be76a826fd9af51c0315217; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:05:37.944Z.