ERA18LA038 · Beech B 55 A
Beech B 55 A · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From Statesville Regional Airport (SVH) to Statesville Regional Airport (SVH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA038
- 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 B 55 A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft B-55
- 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
- N592SS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Statesville Regional Airport (SVH), Statesville, NCTo Statesville Regional Airport (SVH), Statesville, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 (partial)
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a flight review with a flight instructor in the multiengine airplane when, during the initial climb following a touch-and-go landing, the airplane yawed to the left. The pilot noticed a change in engine sound and the airplane began to descend. The airplane bounced on the runway and collided with a ditch before skidding to a stop on the edge of the taxiway. The fuselage was substantially damaged during the accident. A postaccident examination and test run of the left engine revealed that it was capable of producing full power; however, when rapidly moving the throttle from idle to full power, a total loss of engine power would occur. The engine's timing was off by 3° from that specified by the engine data plate; testing of the fuel control revealed an excessively-rich mixture setting at lower power settings; and fuel was observed leaking from the fuel pump. It could not be determined which of these discrepancies, or combination thereof, contributed to the loss of engine power. Given this information, it is likely that the left engine lost power as the airplane transitioned to climb following the touch-and-go landing. The pilot then lost control of the airplane as it descended, bounced onto, and subsequently departed the runway.
Probable cause
A total loss of left engine power during initial climb. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane following the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA038
- Event ID
- 20171117X44300
- Case number
- ERA18LA038
- 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: dfdaf4b17feefa3ffc4881ea73027415bf472e95cd9696c4fa52844463f1b773; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:00:40.347Z.