WPR12LA246 · Beech B36TC
Beech B36TC · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA) to Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA246
- 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 B36TC
- 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
- N8234M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA), Santa Barbara, CATo Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH), Mammoth Lakes, 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A few days before the accident, the private pilot requested that the airplane be serviced with equal quantities of fuel in each wing tank. The ramp agent instead filled the left tank close to capacity and did not put any fuel in the right tank. The pilot was not aware of the discrepancy, and during the preflight inspection, he checked the fuel tank levels using the wing-mounted sight gauges. However, he misread the right tank quantity and continued the preflight inspection even though the fuel quantity gauges in the cabin did not match the sight gauges. The sight gauge design allows for the display of fuel quantity only when the tank is filled to between 25 and 35 gallons (about 1/2 to 3/4 full). However, when the tank is filled to 1/4 of its capacity or less, the tail of the gauge needle points to the 32 gallon (3/5 capacity) position. This most likely accounted for the pilot’s misinterpretation of the fuel level.
During the initial climb, with the right fuel tank selected, the engine lost all power. The pilot failed to recognize the fuel starvation condition and performed troubleshooting steps by memory before ultimately switching the fuel tank selector valve to the left tank, which was full. The pilot’s troubleshooting procedures included multiple activations of the auxiliary fuel pump on HI mode, which, according to the airplane manufacturer’s emergency checklist, was not the appropriate action for a fuel starvation condition. The use of the pump resulted in an excessively rich fuel mixture when the left tank was selected and prevented the engine from being restarted. The pilot then switched back to the empty fuel tank and performed a gear-up forced landing into a plowed field.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power during initial climb due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident were the pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection, his failure to properly diagnose the loss of engine power, and his failure to follow the appropriate emergency procedures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA246
- Event ID
- 20120605X34541
- Case number
- WPR12LA246
- 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, coordinates. 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: fc4ddd322b87551d027dfb471b56e5a938b37725f4e4801ee382a130ca5d6a03; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:23:34.541Z.