GAA17CA058 · Beech 58TC
H3 Aviation Beech 58TC · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (KCAE) to Quitman Brooks County Airport (4J5)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA058
- 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 58TC
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 58
- 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
- N2CH
- Operator
- H3 Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (KCAE), Columbia, SCTo Quitman Brooks County Airport (4J5), Quitman, GA
- 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
- 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 exhaustion
- 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
According to the pilot of the twin-engine airplane, he descended from 7,000 ft and leveled off at 3,000 ft. After leveling off, the fuel quantity indicators fluctuated then showed empty. He recalled that, about 5 minutes after leveling off, the right engine began to run very roughly, so he enriched the right engine's mixture and activated the auxiliary fuel pump. He added that, subsequently, "the right engine failed and the left engine simultaneously began losing power." The pilot declared an emergency with air traffic control, began receiving vectors, and the left engine lost power.
The pilot pitched the airplane for best glide distance. He selected the nearest suitable landing area, extended the landing gear and flaps, and landed the airplane in a field. During the landing roll, he turned the airplane to the right to avoid a collision with obstacles, and the nose landing gear bounced several times and separated from the airplane. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage bulkheads, longerons, and stringers.
The pilot believed that, due to his failure to visually check the fuel level, he overestimated the amount of fuel on board.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to ensure that adequate fuel was onboard for the flight, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA058
- Event ID
- 20161107X85939
- Case number
- GAA17CA058
- 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: c1df92dc13fd75d6551f4066da899fc7cacc9d1b73b9717a082293df00029fa6; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:48:57.373Z.