WPR16FA102 · Beech G35
Beech G35 · Accident: fuel related en route
From Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU) to Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16FA102
- 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
- 1 · 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 G35
- 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
- N4401D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU), Glendale, AZTo Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU), Glendale, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 60 years (built 1956)
- 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
- 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 related
- 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 flight instructor was asked to complete a maintenance test flight of the airplane following the installation of a repaired carburetor. He elected to use the flight to provide instruction to the private pilot who had requested a checkout in the airplane. The private pilot reported that the flight was initially normal, but then the engine stopped responding to throttle control. According to the private pilot, the engine remained at idle power as the airplane descended and impacted trees in a residential area.
Examination of the wreckage revealed that the carburetor throttle cable was detached from the throttle body linkage. The bolt and castellated nut used to secure the throttle cable to the linkage were found lying separately in the engine cowling; there was no evidence that a cotter pin had been used to secure the nut on the bolt, as required.
It is likely that the loss of engine power resulted from the failure of the mechanic who installed the carburetor to install the cotter pin when he attached the throttle cable to the carburetor. During the maintenance test flight, the castellated nut backed off of the bolt, which resulted in a loss of throttle control.
Probable cause
The mechanic's failure to properly secure the bolt connecting the throttle cable to the carburetor during the installation of the carburetor, which resulted in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16FA102
- Event ID
- 20160507X23700
- Case number
- WPR16FA102
- 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: d96d0695de0c3bc0968a690803ade97ca9fce78a08baeebee2caa09942c4f06a; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:45:18.947Z.