ERA19LA083 · Beech 35 S35
Beech 35 S35 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE) to Blue Grass Airport (LEX)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA083
- 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 S35
- 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
- N6136V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE), Allentown, PATo Blue Grass Airport (LEX), Lexington, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1965)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the airplane was high on the approach and he performed a slip to descend the airplane to his desired approach angle. About 1,000 feet above ground level, the pilot added engine power to maintain his approach angle, and the engine did not respond. The pilot performed a forced landing to a horse farm, where fences dividing the pastures substantially damaged the airplane during landing.
After the accident, about 15 gallons of fuel were recovered from the left main fuel tank and about 16 gallons were recovered from the right main fuel tank. Each tank had a total capacity of 40 gallons. A placard mounted on the instrument panel cautioned: "Avoid prolonged slips (20 seconds or more) with fuel tanks less than half full."
Examination of the airplane and a postaccident engine run revealed no pre-impact mechanical anomalies that would have prevented normal operation. It is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper slip maneuver on final approach, which resulted in a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA083
- Event ID
- 20190128X20852
- Case number
- ERA19LA083
- 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: a1ba20a10d29f404d3554e3fab1cdb93a1a7cbe5226d8f878ed0e3b986385c33; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:33:51.644Z.