ERA12LA489 · Beech A36TC
Papa Alfa Beech A36TC · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Billy Mitchell Airport (HSE) to Fayetteville Regional Airport - Grannis Field (FAY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA489
- 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
- N6672X
- Operator
- Papa Alfa
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Billy Mitchell Airport (HSE), Hatteras, NCTo Fayetteville Regional Airport - Grannis Field (FAY), Fayetteville, NC
- 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 final
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While conducting a preflight inspection, the pilot observed that the right wing fuel tank was leaking at the sump on the underside of the wing. He also noted that there was no fuel in the right wing tank; however, the left wing tank contained about 33 gallons. The pilot then departed on a cross-country flight with the intention of landing at an intermediate airport that had appropriate maintenance services to have the fuel sump inspected. Upon reaching the intermediate airport, the pilot elected to continue to his original destination airport instead. While on final approach for landing at the destination airport, the engine experienced a total loss of power, and the pilot performed a forced landing to a field just short of the runway, resulting in substantial damage to the right wing. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that both left and right wing fuel tanks were intact and absent of fuel; however, fuel quantity indicators for the tanks read 1/8 and 1/4 full, respectively. Postaccident fuel consumption calculations indicated that the airplane should have consumed about 24 gallons of fuel during the accident flight, thus it is possible that there was less fuel than the pilot observed in the left tank before departure. During a test run after fuel was supplied, the engine started on the first attempt, and ran smoothly and continuously through all power settings with no anomalies observed.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper fuel planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA489
- Event ID
- 20120801X82257
- Case number
- ERA12LA489
- 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: 241c7626e62db5c176e523accc3c8eed035476e56ec4dc772c57de8bd8f506c3; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:09:27.530Z.