CEN22LA037 · Beech K35
Beech K35 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Houston Executive Airport (TME) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA037
- 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 K35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N899RW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Houston Executive Airport (TME), Houston, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1959)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
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 while on approach to the airport, smoke filled the cockpit and the oil pressure gauge indicated zero. Unable to make the runway, the pilot declared an emergency and turned toward a nearby interstate. During descent, the engine lost total power. The airplane touched down between traffic, and as the airplane slowed, the right wing struck a truck. The airplane swerved off the pavement and it came to rest nose down in the median.
During an on-scene examination, oil was observed along the bottom and right side of the airplane. The engine cowling was removed, and oil was noted inside the cowling and on the engine components near the oil filter. The oil filter safety wire was fractured and separated allowing the oil filter to rotate freely when turned by hand. The pilot who was not a licensed mechanic performed his own oil and oil filter changes on this airplane. When asked about safety wire and how to apply it, he said he was unaware of specific safety wire guidance, he “just installed it.”
It was evident that the loss of engine power resulted due to oil starvation as a result of the loose oil filter. Given the available evidence it it could not be determined why the oil filter safety wire fractured or if it was properly installed.
Probable cause
A complete loss of engine power due to oil starvation as a result of the oil filter safety wire fracturing and the oil filter becoming loose in flight for a reason that could not be determined given the evidence available during the investigation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA037
- Event ID
- 20211117104258
- Case number
- CEN22LA037
- 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: f030c892035c702bc3ea5d411907bdd0559ad768e96b52c1fbddd17dc7dcc45c; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:45:06.985Z.