CEN15IA365 · Beech V35
Beech V35 · Incident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Mid-Carolina Regional Airport (RUQ) to Ann Arbor Municipal Airport (ARB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15IA365
- 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
- Incident
- 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 V35
- 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
- N2059W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid-Carolina Regional Airport (RUQ), Salisbury, NCTo Ann Arbor Municipal Airport (ARB), Ann Arbor, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1965)
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight. The pilot reported that, during cruise flight, he heard a sudden high-pitched whine emanating from the engine and saw that the tachometer was reading about 3,500 rpm. He was unable to bring the engine rpm within limits and diverted the airplane to the nearest airport. During the approach, he heard a "pop," and oil covered the windscreen. After landing, he found that the propeller was missing from the airplane.
A postaccident examination of the engine found metal particulates in the propeller governor. An examination of the governor revealed that a flyweight was not secured and that the flyweight carrier did not meet the factory hardness specifications. The flyweight's retaining pin hole was excessively worn, which had allowed the pin to back out and the flyweight to become loose and resulted in the overspeed of the propeller and engine and the subsequent in-flight separation of the propeller.
A review of factory records did not find any similar incidents or a history of a batch of materials not meeting factory specifications. A review of the maintenance records revealed that an overhauled propeller governor had been installed on the airplane about 16 years before the accident; however, it could not be determined if the improper flyweight carrier was installed in the propeller governor during the overhaul or at some time after the overhaul.
Probable cause
The loosening of the flyweight due to the installation of an improperly hardened flyweight carrier, which resulted in the overspeed of the propeller and engine and the subsequent in-flight separation of the propeller.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15IA365
- Event ID
- 20150818X51118
- Case number
- CEN15IA365
- 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, damage. 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: 9fcb6a392cab73d60639aba50646416ec984ef8e6c5824c4365238210ed18bc4; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:41:24.477Z.