ERA21LA002 · Beech BE-36 M
Beech BE-36 M · Accident: fuel related en route
From Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO) to Myrtle Beach International Airport (MYR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA002
- 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
- 0
- 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 BE-36 M
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-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
- N656V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO), Greensboro, NCTo Myrtle Beach International Airport (MYR), Myrtle Beach, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 60 years (built 1960)
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he moved the fuel selector from the auxiliary tank position to the right tank position and then initiated a descent to toward the destination airport. At that time, the engine “went back to idle, like someone had pulled the throttle back.” The pilot moved the propeller, throttle, and mixture levers full forward, checked switch positions, and tried all positions on the fuel selector, and power was not restored. He “bumped” the fuel boost pump to the ON position, then turned it off to prevent flooding of the engine. The pilot turned toward the nearest airport and the airplane collided with trees and terrain about 1 mile from the airport, resulting in substantial damage. Examination and testing of the engine and fuel selector resulted in a successful engine run, and the fuel selector functioned as designed with no anomalies noted. Comparisons of engine monitoring data, flight track data, and construction of the fuel system revealed signatures consistent with the fuel selector having been moved from the auxiliary tank position to an intermediate position before the right tank position, which stopped the flow of fuel. The fuel between the fuel selector and the engine provided power briefly, and then engine power stopped when the pilot initiated the descent, and the pilot’s remedial actions failed to restore engine power. A placard on the accident airplane’s fuel selector plate stated, “Warning: Position Selector in Detents Only. No Fuel Flow to Engine Between Detents.”
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadvertent placement of the fuel selector in an intermediate position, which starved the engine of fuel and resulted in a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA002
- Event ID
- 20201002102075
- Case number
- ERA21LA002
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-10-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7742a81f3ff2c15dd3b385e3321f3976ffedd66dd5a841a220af328dbd811182; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:10:00.505Z.