ERA19LA217 · Beech 77
Beech 77 · Accident: fuel related during initial climb
From Leesburg International Airport (LEE) to Leesburg International Airport (LEE)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA217
- 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 77
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 77
- 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
- N1802Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Leesburg International Airport (LEE), Leesburg, FLTo Leesburg International Airport (LEE), Leesburg, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1983)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor was performing a checkout flight with the commercial pilot. They completed about 30 minutes of air work before returning to the airport to practice takeoffs and landings. The first landing was normal, and the commercial pilot added power to take off. When the airplane reached an altitude of 400 ft above the ground, the engine lost partial power and the airplane began to descend. The flight instructor took control of the airplane and landed in trees and a swamp adjacent to the airport. Examination of the engine revealed that it was full of water and debris from immersion in the swamp; however, no mechanical discrepancies were identified that would have precluded normal operation at the time of the accident. A carburetor icing probability chart indicated that the airplane was operating in an environment associated with a serious risk of carburetor ice accumulation at glide power settings. The flight instructor stated that they did not use carburetor heat before landing because the carburetor heat caused the engine to run very rough when applied. Given that a postaccident examination of the engine revealed no mechanical issues with the engine, and the flight instructor stated that the carburetor heat was not being used during the flight while operating in an environment that was conducive to carburetor icing, the loss of engine power was most likely due to carburetor ice that accumulated during the approach.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to carburetor icing, which resulted from the flight instructor's decision not to use carburetor heat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA217
- Event ID
- 20190630X14130
- Case number
- ERA19LA217
- 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: 5b556d6fb588bd811c6dbb236a49aa5847c033ac2de123ddab2ee0088864ad75; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:20:17.063Z.