WPR18FA266 · Beech 33 F33A
Beech 33 F33A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to Cottonwood Airport (P52)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18FA266
- 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
Beech 33 F33A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 33
- 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
- N2031D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), Las Vegas, NVTo Cottonwood Airport (P52), Cottonwood, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1978)
- 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
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner of the airplane and the pilot completed a cross-country flight; upon landing, the owner disembarked and the pilot departed alone on the return flight. Radar data showed that the airplane entered the traffic pattern at the origination airport at the conclusion of the return flight and, after turning onto the final leg of the traffic pattern for landing, the airplane continued to descend and impacted the roof of a home about 1/4 mile from the approach end of the runway. A witness who responded to the site immediately after the accident stated that the pilot said "something about an engine problem." The left wing and fuel tank were mostly intact; the tank contained trace amounts of fuel. The inboard right wing, including the fuel tank, was mostly consumed by a postcrash fire. The fuel selector was found in the right tank position. Postaccident examination of the airplane and test run of the engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The owner of the airplane stated that they departed on the first leg of the flight with the airplane fueled to capacity. About 30 minutes into the flight, they switched the fuel selector from the right tank to the left tank. Fuel consumption information from the airplane's Pilots Operating Handbook indicated that, if the airplane flew the remainder of the first leg of the flight and the entire return flight with the left fuel tank selected, the fuel consumed would have been about equal to the usable fuel available in that tank. Given the lack of fuel found in the intact left main tank, the lack of mechanical anomalies found during examination, and the pilot's report of engine problems, it is likely that the pilot failed to switch the fuel selector during the return flight, which resulted in fuel starvation and a total loss of engine power. It is possible that the pilot switched fuel tanks following the loss of power but that the airplane's low altitude at the time of the power loss provided inadequate time to restore fuel flow and engine power before the airplane impacted the ground.
Probable cause
The pilot's mismanagement of the available fuel, 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 WPR18FA266
- Event ID
- 20180918X21405
- Case number
- WPR18FA266
- 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: e0e27b713b4b7400e29b352878bd4ae60c71a54f80515041f571fd1914e19b78; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:48:12.799Z.