ERA17LA347 · Beech 35 UNDESIGNAT
Beech 35 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE) to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA347
- 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 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
- N3187V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FLTo Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 70 years (built 1947)
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot fueled the airplane to capacity before departing on a local photography flight. About 1 hour after departing, the pilot was climbing the airplane to cruise altitude for the return to the departure airport. About 800 to 1,000 ft above mean sea level, the airplane experienced a sudden, total loss of engine power over open water and beyond gliding distance to shore. The pilot prepared to ditch and attempted five engine restarts without success. The propeller continued to windmill as the airplane landed upright, but subsequently sank in about 12 ft of saltwater. The airplane was recovered 12 days later and a fuel sheen was observed in the area.
The wreckage was examined following recovery and the engine crankshaft could not be rotated due to saltwater corrosion. Examination of the engine-driven fuel pump revealed that the drive shaft remained intact and could be actuated by hand with no anomalies noted. The engine and its ignition and induction systems could not be thoroughly examined or tested due to extensive saltwater corrosion; therefore, the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because saltwater corrosion precluded a complete examination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA347
- Event ID
- 20170916X94130
- Case number
- ERA17LA347
- 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: 5077c0fa7d419596c017e8ed71a521d3ad95c9dbd3ba86df5c02337d08510b38; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:51:13.124Z.