WPR13LA190 · Beech 35-B33
Beech 35-B33 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Pegasus Airpark (5AZ3) to San Manuel Airport (E77)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA190
- 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 35-B33
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N6841Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pegasus Airpark (5AZ3), Queen Creek, AZTo San Manuel Airport (E77), San Manuel, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1964)
- 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot overflew the airport and performed a 360-degree descending left turn to join the downwind leg for landing. As the pilot began the turn to final, the airplane's engine did not respond when he attempted to increase power. With limited time to troubleshoot, the pilot turned on the auxiliary fuel pump; the engine did not respond, and he performed a forced landing short of the runway.
The pilot intended to land at the airport to refuel. The left fuel tank quantity indicator gauge was inoperative, so he could not provide an accurate assessment of its quantity. The left fuel tank was selected during the entire approach sequence, and although 10 gallons of fuel were present in that tank after the accident, it had been breached, so an accurate assessment of the quantity before the accident could not be made. The right tank contained 12 gallons of fuel. The pilot surmised that fuel flow may have been restored if he had switched to the right fuel tank when the engine lost power, as was required by the emergency checklist.
The Pilot's Operating Handbook required that the fuel tanks contain a minimum of 10 gallons each to perform basic aerobatic maneuvers. While such maneuvers were not performed, the sweeping nature of the 360-degree descending left turn prior to landing may have forced fuel away from the tanks' supply line, resulting in fuel starvation. The engine monitor revealed that power was actually lost during that turn rather than on the base leg, further supporting this theory. Additionally, residual quantities of fuel were noted in the remaining fuel supply lines to the firewall, and no fuel was present in the lines forward of the engine driven fuel pump, bolstering the likelihood that fuel starvation occurred. A postimpact examination did not reveal any mechanical anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
The airplane was equipped with lap belt restraints, which did not have provisions for a shoulder harness. The pilot sustained injuries to his upper body during the accident sequence, which would likely have been less severe had the airplane been equipped with either a shoulder or multi-point harness.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation during the landing approach. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to follow the emergency checklist and switch tanks. Contributing to the severity of the pilot's injuries was the lack of a shoulder harness restraint.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA190
- Event ID
- 20130413X70531
- Case number
- WPR13LA190
- 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: 7904ff4579e9a5a66430b151cf3068916bcb44e8086e2eea2a5c5dcef55f1bd6; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:17:32.641Z.