CEN22LA403 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident en route
From Cherry Capital Airport (TVC) to Oakland County International Airport (PTK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA403
- 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
- N2270L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cherry Capital Airport (TVC), Traverse City, MITo Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident occurred during a two-leg cross-country flight. The airplane was fully fueled before the return flight. After takeoff, the flight climbed to about 9,000 ft above mean sea level (msl) and proceeded direct to the intended destination. Midway through the flight, the engine began “sputtering for a quick second” and subsequently lost power. The pilot’s attempts to restore engine power, which included adjusting the mixture, were not successful. The propeller continued to windmill during the gliding descent. The pilot executed a forced landing to an open marsh area, and the fuselage and both wings were damaged during the impact sequence.
Postaccident examinations of the fuel-injected engine and airframe fuel system did not reveal any anomalies consistent with a loss of engine power. The left-wing fuel tank vent was clogged with dirt due to the ground impact. The left-wing fuel vent orifice within the fuel tank bladder contained a small amount of debris; however, the vent was not fully obstructed and remained operational. The right-wing fuel vents were clear. Fuel was recovered from both wing tanks at the accident site.
Engine monitor data revealed that the oil pressure, fuel flow, and exhaust gas and cylinder head temperatures were stable during the initial portion of the flight. However, at the time of the loss of engine power, the fuel flow abruptly dropped to near zero and remained there for the duration of the flight. Engine speed and manifold pressure data was not recorded. The exhaust gas temperatures initially increased and then decreased abruptly.
The data recovered from the engine monitor suggested that the loss of engine power was due to an abrupt decrease in fuel flow. However, the engine and airframe fuel system examinations did not reveal any discrepancies consistent with a loss of fuel flow, specifically, or a loss of engine power, in general. The amount of fuel drained from the airplane following the accident indicated that fuel was present in both fuel tanks at the time of the power loss. The minor debris observed in the right fuel tank vent was not significant enough to obstruct the vent line and did not contribute to the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power during cruise flight for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA403
- Event ID
- 20220901105845
- Case number
- CEN22LA403
- 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: d8a990fe5b11483ca2bd15c3ee7e57763d423f548f4dcac93177ef4327f9b14e; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:52:44.160Z.