CEN20LA288 · Beech 36 A36
Strategos International Beech 36 A36 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From an unrecorded airport to Lee's Summit Municipal Airport (KLXT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA288
- 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 36 A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N630JL
- Operator
- Strategos International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Lee's Summit Municipal Airport (KLXT), Lee's Summit, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the initial climb, the pilot noted a rising cylinder head temperature which shortly after led to the airplane oscillating back and forth and responding slowly. The pilot set up for a forced landing and the airplane began to shake and was unable to hold altitude. During the approach to landing, the engine quit, and the pilot minimized his bank angle to stay out of a stall situation. When the airplane touched down, the pilot lost directional control and the airplane skidded off the road into a grassy area. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage.
The pilot reported that on the previous flight, he was in cruise flight at 8,000 ft when he noted that the airplane began “moving back and forth.” He scanned the instruments and saw the cylinder head temperatures (CHT) for the Nos. 5 and 6 cylinders were “running in the red” along with oil temperature. The pilot diverted and landed uneventfully. During the descent for landing, the engine temperatures returned to normal, and he landed uneventfully.
The pilot called the owner and discussed what had occurred. The owner suggested that if the pilot was comfortable, he should return to the home airfield. The pilot agreed to return if the taxi and engine run-up checked normal. The engine run-up was normal, and the pilot departed the airport without incident.
Postaccident examination of the engine found that the No. 5 cylinder head and piston ring had failed with signatures of denotation. Additionally, the turbocharger oil seal had failed. The pilot stated that he was not running the engine lean with fuel.
Probable cause
Failure of the No. 5 piston head and ring, which resulted in a total loss of engine power and the pilot’s decision to takeoff with a known mechanical issue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA288
- Event ID
- 20200716X94229
- Case number
- CEN20LA288
- 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: 804c053306f9c2aeb45205e5635df57e26d006bde446f6c7121f890f4f87d4f4; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:10:37.970Z.