CEN19LA055 · Beech 36
Big Fuga Beech 36 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Bulverde Airpark (1T8) to Bulverde Airpark (1T8)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA055
- 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 36
- 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
- N2021T
- Operator
- Big Fuga
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bulverde Airpark (1T8), San Antonio, TXTo Bulverde Airpark (1T8), San Antonio, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 41 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
- En route
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident pilot was in cruise flight in a single-engine airplane when he declared "mayday" on the radio, stating the airplane's engine was on fire. The accident airplane impacted a field, crossed a road, and came to rest upright. A postcrash fire consumed the majority of the airframe.
The airplane was equipped with a turbo-charged reciprocating engine and propeller that had been converted under a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC). The engine had accumulated 412.2 hours between the last overhaul and the last annual inspection. The last inspection was about three months before the accident.
An examination of the engine revealed fire damage and limited rotation. Disassembly of the engine revealed a broken camshaft and crankshaft. Metallurgical examination of the crankshaft revealed crack arrest marks in the crankshaft, consistent with fatigue, which initiated in the fillet radius at the forward end of the number 6 connecting rod journal. Multiple crack origins and prominent crack arrest lines were consistent with a relatively high stress associated with crack initiation. However, a reason for the high stress or fatigue initiation could not be determined based on the limited airplane records and the damage to the airplane.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fatigue failure of the crankshaft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA055
- Event ID
- 20190118X92207
- Case number
- CEN19LA055
- 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: aefa14fbabeb50aac02e4d0fd4be15f3e44a2c0eab0882f84bd1dbb0c79531e3; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:53:10.031Z.