CEN18LA276 · Beech V35
Beech V35 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Fair Weather Field (TX42) to West Houston Airport (IWS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA276
- 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 V35
- 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
- N228Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fair Weather Field (TX42), Monaville, TXTo West Houston Airport (IWS), Houston, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1966)
- 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 · 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, as he approached the destination airport, he noted "a sudden and severe noise and vibration" and "a…stream of gray smoke from under the right side of the [engine] cowling," followed by a loss of engine power. The pilot subsequently conducted a forced landing, during which the airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and right wing.
Postaccident engine examination revealed two holes in the top of the crankcase near the Nos. 3 and 4 cylinders. A teardown examination of the engine revealed that the No. 4 connecting rod had failed due to oil starvation, which resulted in a catastrophic engine failure. Foreign debris, which was similar to a paper towel, was recovered from the engine oil sump and the oil pickup screen. Most of the screen area was obstructed by the debris, which had interrupted the oil flow from the sump to the engine.
The airplane maintenance records noted that the alternator and alternator drive gear were replaced about 8 weeks before the accident. The engine had been operated about 24 hours since the alternator replacement. The starter and starter adapter were replaced the day before the accident flight. The engine had been operated about 15 minutes since the most recent maintenance work was performed. It is likely that maintenance personnel left the paper towel in the engine during the recent maintenance work, which resulted in oil starvation, the failure of the connecting rod, and the catastrophic engine failure and subsequent total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s failure to remove a paper towel from the engine during recent maintenance, which resulted in oil starvation, the failure of a connecting rod, and a catastrophic engine failure and subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA276
- Event ID
- 20180717X82154
- Case number
- CEN18LA276
- 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: ce43950c4ab6788fd220e2e7a3d815b7811bc0563db9f7ac1319140d9d2587b7; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:53:50.875Z.