WPR18TA243 · Beech 36 Undesignat
Beech 36 Undesignat · Accident: fuel related en route
From Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW) to Portland International Airport (PDX)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18TA243
- 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 36 Undesignat
- 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
- N9031S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW), Tacoma, WATo Portland International Airport (PDX), Portland, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1968)
- 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 · descent
- 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 related
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while en route to the destination airport during the personal flight, the engine lost power. The pilot initiated a forced landing to a field, which resulted in substantial damage to the airplane. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the engine or airframe that would have precluded normal operation. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right fuel tank was empty, while the left fuel tank was full. The pilot stated that he did not remember switching fuel tanks during the flight and that, given that the right fuel tank was empty, he likely ran out of fuel.
Probable cause
The pilot's fuel mismanagement, which led to fuel starvation, a total loss of engine power, and the subsequent forced landing to a field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18TA243
- Event ID
- 20180828X20610
- Case number
- WPR18TA243
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-08-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d76df64289f15dab3257247dd374c490d21718fb1d44d9a560a0a90689ea5501; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:10:17.592Z.