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WPR21LA342 · Beech 58 P

13 Sept 2021 · Palo Alto, CA, United States

Faford Aviation Leasing Beech 58 P · Accident: wrong fuel before flight

From an unrecorded airport to Reno Tahoe International Airport (RNO)

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Event

NTSB case
WPR21LA342
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
Event fatalities
Unknown
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 58 P

Aircraft type
Beechcraft 58
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
N162DF
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From not recordedTo Reno Tahoe International Airport (RNO), Reno, NV
Aircraft age
About 39 years (built 1982)
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
Prior to flight
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
Wrong fuel
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 › Action/decision

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 reported that, shortly after takeoff, about 500 ft above the ground, both engines lost power. A forced landing was subsequently initiated to an open area. During the landing, the left wing collided with a wooden post and was substantially damaged. The pilot reported that there were no preacccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane was fueled before the flight. The fueler reported that he incorrectly fueled the airplane with Jet A fuel instead of Avgas. He added that he did not notice the “Avgas only” label adjacent to the fuel port, and that he did not follow the company’s fueling checklist while fueling the accident airplane.

Probable cause

The fuelers addition of the incorrect fuel to the fuel tanks which resulted in a total loss of engine power.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record WPR21LA342
Event ID
20210913103850
Case number
WPR21LA342
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: 0b85ac71354ec823887441ee1d2c51004a2bdc18684271ecae953417d2a2d53d; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:31:22.163Z.