ERA14LA336 · Beech C24R
Southeast Aviation Services Beech C24R · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX) to Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA336
- 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 C24R
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 24
- 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
- N6222Q
- Operator
- Southeast Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX), Titusville, FLTo Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX), Titusville, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 32 years (built 1982)
- 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 · descent
- 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 systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while conducting a preflight inspection, he looked inside the wing fuel tanks and estimated that there was about 27 gallons of fuel. He then departed on a local flight to test the avionics and autopilot system. While returning to the airport after an approximate 1-hour flight, the engine experienced a total loss of power, and the pilot attempted a forced landing on the roof of a building. The airplane crashed through the roof, which resulted in substantial damage to the wings, fuselage, and flight control surfaces.
No visible fuel or fuel odor was noted at the accident site. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that both fuel tanks had been breached and were void of fuel. The fuel strainer sump, which sits forward of the firewall below the fuselage, was found in the open-and-locked position. When the strainer valve's tangs were pushed up and rotated counter-clockwise, the sump remained in the open-and-locked position. The sump sprang back to the closed position when the tangs were pushed up and released. Postaccident fuel consumption calculations and fuel strainer drain testing revealed that the airplane would have burned through and lost about 28 gallons of fuel during the approximate 1-hour flight with the strainer drain not properly secured.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to secure the fuel strainer drain during the preflight inspection, 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 ERA14LA336
- Event ID
- 20140710X60457
- Case number
- ERA14LA336
- 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: 9d89354fdac5ea3ad59bf6f6d2da2732eb088e6b7d4a21f743e1f1b8eb25dc9c; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:53:22.240Z.