WPR19LA064 · Beech 35 B35
Beech 35 B35 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Jefferson County International Airport (0S9) to Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA064
- 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 B35
- 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
- N5093C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jefferson County International Airport (0S9), Port Townsend, WATo Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE), Everett, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1950)
- 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 · climb to 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff and during the initial climb, the cabin door opened, and the pilot elected to return to the airport. Upon entering the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, the pilot noticed that the left fuel gauge indicated full; and the right fuel gauge indicated empty. Shortly thereafter, the engine lost total power and the pilot performed a forced landing, during which the airplane impacted trees, resulting in substantial damage.
Examination of the wreckage revealed that the right main fuel tank and right tip tank had been breached during the accident sequence, while the left main wing tank and left tip tank were minimally damaged. Recovery personnel reported that about 12 gallons of aviation fuel was drained from the left main fuel tank and the left tip tank. The fuel selector handle was in the right tank position. When operated by hand, the handle moved freely through 360° rotation by hand, with each detent identified by feel. Examination revealed no mechanical anomalies with the engine or airframe that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of fuel starvation when the pilot failed to switch from the empty right main tank to the left main tank.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation and the pilot’s mismanagement of the available fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA064
- Event ID
- 20190113X82653
- Case number
- WPR19LA064
- 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, 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: 17c7845383a89bdeb595335033de41a48b142839d9831624eeddafc7da5c015b; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:32:36.950Z.