CEN12LA346 · Beech 77
Beech 77 · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Pierre Regional Airport (PIR) to Morris Municipal Airport Charlie Schmidt Field (MOX)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA346
- 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 77
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 77
- 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
- N18012
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pierre Regional Airport (PIR), Pierre, SDTo Morris Municipal Airport Charlie Schmidt Field (MOX), Morris, MN
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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 exhaustion
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The passenger reported that the airplane’s low fuel light illuminated during the flight. She stated that they continued the flight and were circling to land on a grass runway when the airplane crashed. A witness reported seeing the airplane pass over the runway at a low altitude with the engine operating. The airplane then abruptly climbed and initiated a turn. The witness said that the airplane’s nose dropped as if the airplane had stalled and it then descended and impacted the ground. The airplane incurred substantial damage, which included separation of the engine, outboard left wing and aft fuselage, and upward bending of the right wing. There was no bending of the blades of the engine’s propeller, indicating that the engine was not producing power at the time of the impact. Both fuel tanks ruptured, and only 1 gallon of fuel was recovered at the scene. No fuel was found in the gascolator or carburetor. No fuel odor was present at the accident site. The airplane maintenance manual indicated that 1 gallon of the airplane’s fuel supply was unusable fuel. It is likely that the engine lost power during the landing approach due to fuel exhaustion and that the pilot failed to maintain airspeed after the power loss, resulting in an inadvertent stall.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper fuel management, which led to fuel exhaustion, and his failure to maintain adequate airspeed resulting in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA346
- Event ID
- 20120608X90939
- Case number
- CEN12LA346
- 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: 9d6cac06ad4569dd83b9f1491f5c94bd572c7938fc832ee0b7d085543e06378f; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:26:35.298Z.