CEN20LA228 · Beech 24 A24R
Beech 24 A24R · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Covey Trails Airport (X09) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA228
- 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 24 A24R
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 24
- 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
- N444JR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Covey Trails Airport (X09), Fulshear, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1970)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and his passenger departed on a cross-country flight en route to their home airport. While flying at 7,500 ft mean sea level, the engine began to violently shake, vibrate, and then lost power. The pilot attempted a forced landing to a nearby airport; however, the airplane impacted trees and terrain short of the runway. The airplane came to rest upright in a field about 300 yards short of the runway.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the No. 3 cylinder had separated from the engine crankcase. The cylinder, piston, and fractured connecting rod remained within the engine cowling. A review of the maintenance records revealed no recent history of major engine maintenance.
Several weeks after the accident, the airplane was recovered by unknown personnel to an unknown location. Examination of the engine to determine the failure of the No. 3 cylinder was not possible.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to the failure of the No. 3 cylinder for reasons that could not be determined based on available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA228
- Event ID
- 20200614X15559
- Case number
- CEN20LA228
- 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, coordinates, 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: 61e0d15e010c300809d39f7a6a033c4006e52e62b12ee5db039e781f31c48714; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:50:51.171Z.