CEN18FA049 · Raytheon Aircraft Company B36TC
Raytheon Aircraft Company B36TC · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT) to Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18FA049
- 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
- 1 · 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
Raytheon Aircraft Company B36TC
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N679EA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT), Phoenix, AZTo Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS), St. Louis, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2001)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was nearing the destination airport at the conclusion of an approximate 1,100 nautical mile cross-country flight; the accident occurred about 5 hours 26 minutes after takeoff. During the visual approach for landing, the pilot performed a constant left turn for about 3 minutes from the downwind leg to the final leg of the traffic pattern. About the time the pilot rolled out of the left turn and onto the final approach leg, he reported to the tower controller that he had an issue and was losing engine power. The airplane subsequently impacted a gas station pump canopy and parking lot about 1 mile from the end of the runway, where it was destroyed during a post-impact fire. Several witnesses near the accident location observed the airplane at a low altitude with the wings rocking back and forth, and they heard no engine noise.
A postaccident examination of the airframe and a functional engine test revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
The fuel selector was found on the left tank position. The total fuel quantity of fuel on board the airplane at takeoff and the quantity remaining in each fuel tank at the accident site could not be determined; however, the airplane would likely have been low on fuel as it neared the departure airport. It is likely that the pilot's extended left turn from downwind to final approach moved fuel away from the fuel tank pick up point, which resulted in fuel starvation and a total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18FA049
- Event ID
- 20171207X64827
- Case number
- CEN18FA049
- 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: e159a90329fb94efe41daef86f26502f1c62f3545d489242edf2b8bb5a5d146a; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:26:45.572Z.