CEN20LA145 · Beech 35 N35
Beech 35 N35 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Creve Coeur Airport (1H0) to Millard Airport (MLE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA145
- 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 N35
- 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
- N1258Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Creve Coeur Airport (1H0), St Louis, MOTo Millard Airport (MLE), Omaha, NE
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1961)
- 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 · 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)
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the accident flight was the third following an annual inspection; the airplane had flown about 1.5 hours since the completion of the annual inspection. About 80 minutes into the flight, the engine ceased to produce power. When the pilot moved the throttle from the cruise setting to idle and then back to the previous setting, the RPM gauge fluctuated, but power could not be restored. He said that while looking for a place to land, he and his passenger began detecting a "slight burning smell."
He conducted an emergency landing to a grass field. Upon touchdown, the nose gear collapsed, and the left main gear was compressed up and into the left wing, resulting in substantial damage to the wing.
Postaccident examinations of the engine, ignition system, fuel system and propeller governor found no evidence of any anomalies or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA145
- Event ID
- 20200411X15400
- Case number
- CEN20LA145
- 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: 3eb0326a77585e3704e1387f823c7a24168062c4969a0beedf42c3f66028f764; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:26:45.302Z.