CEN22LA140 · Beech A36
Hook Em Beech A36 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Bentonville Municipal-Louise M Thaden Field (VBT) to Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport (MEZ)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA140
- 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 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
- N9410Q
- Operator
- Hook Em
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bentonville Municipal-Louise M Thaden Field (VBT), Bentonville, ARTo Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport (MEZ), Mena, AR
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1971)
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 he noticed the engine oil pressure dropped to 14 psi after he began the descent to his destination airport. He turned toward a nearby airport, but shortly thereafter the oil pressure dropped to 0 psi and the engine seized. The pilot executed a forced landing to a field and the airplane sustained substantial damage to its wings when it struck fences and livestock feeding troughs during the landing. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed several missing and loose bolts securing the engine valve covers. The No. 4 cylinder valve cover was completely off and its gasket was not located after the accident. The No. 6 cylinder valve cover was very loose and was only held on by 4 of the 8 bolts normally used to secure the cover. The No. 4 cylinder valve arm shaft bolt was missing. Metal shavings were observed throughout the valve assembly area as well as deposited on the cowling and airplane along with the lost engine oil. Review of maintenance records did not reveal any recorded maintenance to the rocker covers since the most recent engine overhaul 6 years before the accident. Maintenance entries since the overhaul indicated routine maintenance, including annual/100-hour inspections and oil changes, with no leaks detected during post-maintenance engine runs. Attempts to discover when the rocker covers were last accessed for maintenance were unsuccessful. Based on the available evidence the loss of engine power was due to oil exhaustion that resulted from improper installation of the engine valve covers. Determination of when the improper maintenance was performed could not be determined based on the maintenance entries that were available.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to oil exhaustion which resulted from improper engine maintenance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA140
- Event ID
- 20220314104768
- Case number
- CEN22LA140
- 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: 5c6cff2703734f7f352cad6dfa069c3da1c6e9f1851025813614519c829b8c25; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:02:08.499Z.