WPR16LA048 · Beech 35 C33 UNDESIGNAT
Beech 35 C33 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Porterville Municipal Airport (PTV) to Henderson Executive Airport (HND)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16LA048
- 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 35 C33 UNDESIGNAT
- 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
- N20XY
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Porterville Municipal Airport (PTV), Porterville, CATo Henderson Executive Airport (HND), Henderson, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot and flight instructor were performing an instructional cross-country flight to familiarize the pilot with the newly-purchased airplane and return the airplane to the pilot's home airport. The pilot reported that, during final approach for landing at an intermediate airport, the engine experienced a partial loss of power. He tried to troubleshoot; however, there was insufficient altitude to restart the engine, and the airplane impacted the terrain short of the runway. The nose landing gear collapsed and the airplane came to rest nose-down. The left wing fuel tank contained about 12 gallons of fuel, and the right wing tank was full.
A postaccident examination of the recovered airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The engine was run on the airframe through various power settings to include idle and full power; however, the engine could only be run smoothly at idle after leaning the mixture control. Application of throttle required a richening of the mixture control to obtain full power.
The engine-driven fuel pump, throttle body/fuel metering unit, and the fuel manifold valve were removed and subsequently tested individually. The testing revealed no anomalies that would have prevented these components from operating normally on the engine; therefore, the reason for the partial loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during final approach for reasons that could not be determined based on available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16LA048
- Event ID
- 20160105X83726
- Case number
- WPR16LA048
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2016-01-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f2055346ac4b0c943b8218def0a3a72c2324687023c0c62e8ffc10ec597e44e5; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:04:28.097Z.