CEN17LA003 · Beech C23
Beech C23 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Ingleside Regional Airport (TFP) to Taylor Municipal Airport (T74)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA003
- 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 C23
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 23
- 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
- N9704L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ingleside Regional Airport (TFP), Ingleside, TXTo Taylor Municipal Airport (T74), Taylor, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1971)
- 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
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a personal cross-country flight, the airplane's engine lost power when the airplane was 1/2 mile from the destination airport. The airline transport pilot performed a forced landing, during which the airplane struck trees and severed both wings. The fuselage impacted the ground, and the airplane caught fire. Although many of the engine accessories were damaged or destroyed by the postcrash fire, a postaccident examination of the engine revealed considerable debris in the fuel strainer screen, and the fuel strainer bowl was extensively corroded. Thus, it is likely that the debris in the fuel strainer stopped adequate flow of fuel to the engine, resulting in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of debris obstructing the fuel strainer screen and corrosion of the fuel strainer bowl.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA003
- Event ID
- 20161003X64122
- Case number
- CEN17LA003
- 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: ed8127e16269d491154463686a343f6ac62cdfc2788429f3f9a91cbbf7f20d80; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:20:41.173Z.