ERA14FA074 · Raytheon G36
Grey Aviation Advisors & Solutions Raytheon G36 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45) to Destin Executive Airport (DTS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14FA074
- 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
- 1 · 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
Raytheon G36
- 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
- N89SN
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45), West Palm Beach, FLTo Destin Executive Airport (DTS), Destin, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2006)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight was about 60 miles from the destination airport when the pilot reported a total loss of engine power to air traffic control. The controller provided information on nearby airports, and the pilot maneuvered the airplane toward the closest airport. The pilot reported the airport in sight; radio and radar contact were subsequently lost. A search for the airplane was initiated, and the wreckage was located in a heavily wooded swamp about 1 mile east of the airport. There were no known witnesses to the accident. The fuel tank selector handle was found in the "left main" (left wing tank) position. The left wing tank was not breached, and about 1 pint of fuel was recovered from the tank. The right tank was breached, and it contained residual fuel; however, there was no evidence of fuel leakage on the ground beneath the tank. The airplane was fitted with optional wing tip tanks, which were found empty. The total amount of fuel recovered, including the residual fuel in the tanks and fuel recovered from a small pool of water directly under the airplane, was about 2.5 gallons, which was less than the manufacturer-reported unusable fuel quantity of 6 gallons. The airplane was last serviced with fuel about 28 days before to the accident; however, the total fuel onboard at that time could not be determined. The propeller blades exhibited no rotational damage or signatures. After the accident, the engine was removed from the airframe and successfully test run at the manufacturer's facilities; no evidence of pre-accident malfunction or failure was observed.
Although a shoulder harness was available, the pilot was found in the left seat with only his lap belt fastened. Damage to the airplane's multi-function display was consistent with impact by the pilot's head during the accident sequence. The pilot's cause of death was blunt force head trauma, and the impact forces that he experienced would likely have been reduced if he had been wearing his shoulder harness.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight and inflight fuel planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the pilot’s injuries was his failure to use the available shoulder harness.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14FA074
- Event ID
- 20131218X10522
- Case number
- ERA14FA074
- 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: c0b78f849a220b63549ea91a0849422cc78af274827c4fd9438e25878cd4b84f; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:08:54.903Z.