ERA16LA062 · Beech D35
Beech D35 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From Vine Grove Airport (70KY) to Vine Grove Airport (70KY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA062
- 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 D35
- 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
- N2991B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vine Grove Airport (70KY), Vine Grove, KYTo Vine Grove Airport (70KY), Vine Grove, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1953)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, when he departed for the personal flight, there were 15 gallons of fuel in each of the wing fuel tanks. During the initial climb, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power. Subsequently, the pilot performed an emergency off-airport landing. During the landing, the airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, wings, and firewall.
Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The right fuel tank was breached, and an undetermined amount of fuel was noted in the left fuel tank. About 1 gallon of fuel was drained from the auxiliary fuel tank drain valve. Although the pilot stated that he did not remember which fuel tank he had selected before takeoff, given the airplane's fuel state that he reported before takeoff and the fuel observed in the airplane postaccident, it is likely that the pilot mistakenly departed with the fuel selector positioned to the auxiliary fuel tank, which according to the manufacturer, was to be used only during level flight and not for takeoff or landing and that this resulted in the subsequent total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to ensure that the fuel selector was properly positioned before takeoff, which resulted in the subsequent total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA062
- Event ID
- 20151207X23713
- Case number
- ERA16LA062
- 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: 6bdd37570b03d81e1b4804b5e7562206a574ff26bfa21d64cb1bbfc79481705c; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:00:48.894Z.