ERA21FA237 · Beech A23
Beech A23 · Accident: fuel related while maneuvering
From Smith Reynolds Airport (INT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21FA237
- 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
- 1 · 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 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
- N8780M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Smith Reynolds Airport (INT), Winston Salem, NCTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1964)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot and flight instructor departed on a local training flight. After about 39 minutes, the engine lost total power. Flight track information indicated that the airplane continued to descend, and the last flight track target showed the airplane descending through 1,075 ft mean sea level (msl) at a groundspeed of 64 knots. The elevation at the accident site was about 1,000 ft. The airplane impacted a grass field and sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage.
Review of the airplane’s flight log indicated that the airplane flew 2.8 hours since it was most recently fueled to capacity (58.8 gallons usable) one week before the accident, and that the airplane departed on the accident flight with the left-wing tank about 2/3 full and the right-wing tank about 1/2 full. The fuel consumption indicated by the flight log was consistent with about 14 gallons per hour. Postaccident examination of the engine and fuel system revealed that the left main fuel tank was breached; the right fuel tank, which remained intact, contained about 1 pint of fuel. The fuel selector was in the right tank position. Portions of the fuel system contained a trace amount of fuel, and no fuel was found in the fuel flow divider. When tested, the electric boost pump functioned normally. Other than the absence of fuel, no anomalies were noted with the engine that would have precluded normal operation. Based on the available information, it is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of fuel starvation when the fuel supply in the right tank was exhausted. The procedure for a loss of engine power in the pilot operating handbook included switching the fuel tanks; had the flight instructor switched the fuel selector from the right to the left-wing tank, it is likely that engine power would have been restored.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s mismanagement of the available fuel, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21FA237
- Event ID
- 20210601103191
- Case number
- ERA21FA237
- 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. 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: d72be7e53138f3043b3bb462be0c0d8982a4ff2811b5b051f336b74ff3b4ec1b; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:29:21.220Z.