CEN16CA364 · Beech V35B B
Beech V35B B · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Marv Skie / Lincoln County Airport (Y14) to Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16CA364
- 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 V35B B
- 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
- N23583
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Marv Skie / Lincoln County Airport (Y14), Tea, SDTo Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD), Sioux Falls, SD
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1978)
- 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 · IFR final approach
- 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 (total)
- 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
While on final during a practice instrument approach, the engine lost total power. An attempted engine restart and switching of the fuel tanks was unsuccessful. The flight instructor took control of the airplane from the pilot receiving instruction, and executed a forced landing to a corn field. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings. The airplane was recovered from the field and about 1 cup of fuel was found in the right fuel tank, and the left wing fuel tank was about 3/4's full. The engine was functionally tested for about 10 minutes on the airframe with no anomalies noted. The pilot reported he did not check the wing fuel tanks during pre-flight and relied on the cockpit fuel gauges for fuel quantity.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately manage the available fuel supply, resulting in fuel starvation and a total loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was the inadequate preflight by the pilot and flight instructor, and the flight instructor's failure to monitor the fuel levels.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16CA364
- Event ID
- 20160912X23324
- Case number
- CEN16CA364
- 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: b0aa98527340ded0a650aa5644482b2f619c6f3af15c8d34750c8fe1a92629c2; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:15:13.102Z.