ERA19TA276 · Beech 23 A23
Beech 23 A23 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP) to Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19TA276
- 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 23 A23
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 23
- 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
- N3555R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP), Panama City, FLTo Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP), Panama City, FL
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After returning from a roundtrip, cross-country flight, the student pilot and flight instructor were conducting airport pattern work, go-arounds, and touch-and-go landings. After a normal go-around due to excessive crosswinds, they initiated a no-flap landing for the next attempt. As the student pilot established the airplane on short final, he attempted to arrest the airplane’s descent by increasing engine power, but the engine did not respond. The instructor told the student pilot to “push it back in to add power,” and the student pilot pulled and pushed the throttle several times to try to increase engine power. After several unsuccessful attempts to increase engine power, the instructor took control of the airplane and attempted a forced landing. The airplane touched down short of the runway, bounced hard, and struck the landing lights before landing back on the runway. The airplane’s airframe sustained substantial damage. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed an obstructed right trailing edge fuel vent line that likely blocked venting of the fuel tank and resulted a negative pressure within the tank, whichsubsequently starved the engine of fuel and resulted a total loss of engine power. The airplane's flight manual specified that during a preflight inspection, the fuel vent line should be checked for any obstructions, but the flight instructor did not witness the student pilot conduct the preflight inspection of the airplane. It is likely that the student pilot did not detect the blocked vent line during the preflight inspection; had more direct supervision been provided by the flight instructor during the preflight inspection, the blockage would have been discovered.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to an obstructed fuel vent, and the flight instructor's failure to ensure that the student did an adequate preflight inspection, which resulted in a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19TA276
- Event ID
- 20190910X44456
- Case number
- ERA19TA276
- 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: 00ad7e309df2cb9c321a458eea3eb74f7efc7351892f866ff8373bbe734573ce; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:01:26.655Z.