ERA15FA308 · Beech N35
Beech N35 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From Love Field (97FL) to Page Field (FMY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15FA308
- 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
- 2 · 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 N35
- 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
- N390Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Love Field (97FL), Weirsdale, FLTo Page Field (FMY), Fort Myers, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1961)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot was departing in his airplane on a personal flight. A witness, who was a pilot and had seen the airplane take off many times before, reported that, on this takeoff, the airplane appeared lower and slower than he expected. He further noted that the engine initially sounded normal but then started to "stall" as if a cylinder was "missing." The airplane impacted tress about 1,000 ft past the end of the runway and was partially consumed by a postcrash fire. Damage to the propeller blades was indicative of some engine power being produced at the time of impact. Examination of the engine's throttle body metering unit revealed that the mixture control arm remained attached to the unit; however, when turned, it rotated on the shaft with no shaft movement. Disassembly of the unit revealed the internal splines of the throttle and mixture arms were stripped, and brass material from the bronze arms was transferred to the external splines of the steel shafts. The bronze arms should have been replaced with stainless steel arms per a service bulletin issued by the engine manufacturer 8 years before the accident. Because of impact and fire damage to the metering unit; it could not be determined if the stripped arms were the result of impact or an undertorque condition.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during takeoff. The reason for the partial loss of power could not be determined due to the extensive fire and impact damage to the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15FA308
- Event ID
- 20150812X10354
- Case number
- ERA15FA308
- 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: 8aa40a246f9ac16fadff5fbc07c9968b18253f687034281f8e6c9a4107a3b827; retrieved 2026-09-14T19:49:32.369Z.