ERA18LA181 · Beech 35B33
Beech 35B33 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Ocean City Municipal Airport (OXB) to New River Valley Airport (PSK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA181
- 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 35B33
- 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
- N9745Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ocean City Municipal Airport (OXB), Berlin, MDTo New River Valley Airport (PSK), Dublin, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1963)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that, shortly after he retracted the landing gear during the initial climb after takeoff, the airplane began to vibrate and the engine lost power. The pilot initiated a 180° return to the runway, but unable to reach it, performed a forced landing to a golf course.
Postaccident examination of the airplane’s engine revealed that the No. 3 cylinder sustained catastrophic damage, including heavy mechanical damage to the piston and separation of the exhaust valve, a portion of which was lodged under the intake valve. Numerous pieces of metal consistent with material from the No. 3 piston head were found in the oil sump. Given this information, it is likely that the loss of engine power was due to the failure of the No. 3 exhaust valve. The engine manufacturer's maintenance manual recommended that this engine be overhauled at 1,500 hours of operation or every 12 years, whichever occurred first. The maintenance manual also recommended that a borescope be used to inspect the engine’s cylinders during every 100-hour/annual inspection in conjunction with a compression test. The engine maintenance records listed the compression test results during previous annual inspections but did not indicate whether the cylinders had been inspected with a borescope. At the previous annual inspection, about 1 month before the accident, the engine total time was 1,769.1 hours. Additionally, the engine was manufactured about 37 years prior to the accident and had not been overhauled. The investigation did not determine if the impending failure of the exhaust valve could have been detected and corrected had the borescope inspections been performed and/or the engine had been overhauled.
Probable cause
The failure of the No. 3 cylinder exhaust valve, which resulted in the total loss of engine power during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA181
- Event ID
- 20180629X11227
- Case number
- ERA18LA181
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. 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: 3881eb84aa9807db7629af98705377f654839e41b41eea87535562e9debf569d; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:42:19.967Z.