ERA18LA227 · Beech 35 N35
Beech 35 N35 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Rutherford County Marchman Field (FQD) to Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (OMN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA227
- 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 N35
- 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
- N1330Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rutherford County Marchman Field (FQD), Rutherfordton, NCTo Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (OMN), Ormond Beach, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1961)
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was in cruise flight when the engine lost total power. The pilot's attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful. He contacted air traffic control and reported that he was unable to make it to the closest airport and ditched the airplane into the Atlantic Ocean. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that both elevators had separated from the horizontal stabilizer during the ditching. Examination of the engine revealed that a fuel line that had been attached to the fuel flow sensor was broken. Detailed examination of the fracture surfaces on the broken fuel line fitting revealed features that were consistent with high-stress, low-cycle fatigue crack propagation. The crack initiated at the outside, progressing through the thickness of the aluminum fuel line and partially along its circumference until final overstress fracture. A review of the installation drawings and instructions revealed that the fuel flow sensor was installed without a mounting bracket per installation instructions. Given this information, it is likely that the fuel line fractured in fatigue due to the improper installation, and lack of support that would have been provided by the required bracket. The failure of the fuel line subsequently resulted in fuel starvation, and the total loss of engine power. While the available maintenance records detailed the installation of an engine monitoring device and accompanying cylinder head temperature probes, there were no records that indicated when the fuel flow sensor was installed.
Probable cause
The failure of a fuel line due to improper installation of a fuel flow sensor, which resulted in fuel starvation and a subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA227
- Event ID
- 20180822X45546
- Case number
- ERA18LA227
- 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. 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: 0e0aea908131b11e98aec7c5c64a86c98cae6c50cef81457580105e34157e4bc; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:08:14.452Z.