ERA15LA286 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: fuel starvation during takeoff
From Dutchess County Airport (POU) to Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport (BTV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA286
- 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 A36
- 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
- N6677D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dutchess County Airport (POU), Poughkeepsie, NYTo Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport (BTV), Burlington, VT
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- 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 pilot landed the airplane at an intermediate airport to refuel before resuming his cross-country flight. After refueling and sumping the tanks, he taxied, performed an engine run-up, checked the magnetos, and cycled the propeller. During takeoff, the pilot noticed a vibration and unusual noise as the airplane rotated. He applied the brakes, as he thought the wheels were rotating and causing the vibration, and retracted the landing gear, but the vibration continued. The engine then lost partial power. He checked that the propeller, throttle, and mixture controls were full forward, but the airplane would not climb. He indicated that, due to the low airspeed, he could not return to the airport, so he pulled back on the control wheel to clear power lines, "forced the nose down" to prevent a stall, and landed gear-up, during which the airplane sustained substantial damage.
Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of preimpact failures or malfunctions of the airplane or engine. Fuel was observed in both the left and right wing tanks.
A postaccident engine test run was performed in a test cell. The engine started normally; accelerated normally without any hesitation, stumbling, or interruption in power; and produced rated horsepower. Testing of the auxiliary fuel pump, which was designed so that fuel would flow through it regardless of whether it was on or off, revealed that although it was operating within specifications, the discharge fitting was leaking, which allowed air into the fuel system. Disassembly of the discharge fitting revealed that it had likely been installed to the proper torque but that there were deep scratches on the O-ring boss on the pump side of the fitting and a piece of metal embedded in the O-ring, which indicates that it had been damaged before or during installation. After the fittings were replaced, no leaks were found.
Probable cause
A leaking fuel discharge fitting, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power and an off-airport, gear-up landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA286
- Event ID
- 20150728X51412
- Case number
- ERA15LA286
- 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: a4271cbf986400a720bd697420b628548f70e2f36bf8cd646f37fe1b9f730fcd; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:35:29.195Z.