ERA23FA238 · Beech V35
Beech V35 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Oconee County Regional Airport (CEU) to Orange County Airport (MGJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23FA238
- 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 V35
- 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
- N272S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oconee County Regional Airport (CEU), Clemson, SCTo Orange County Airport (MGJ), Montgomery, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1965)
- 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
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was on a long cross-country flight when the airplane’s engine lost power completely. The airplane subsequently impacted terrain in a group of pine trees; a postimpact fire ensued. The cockpit and engine sustained extensive thermal damage. Examination of the engine revealed that the crankcase was breached adjacent to the Nos. 3 and 4 cylinders. Disassembly of the engine revealed damage consistent with oil starvation. Due to the extent of the postimpact fire damage, the source of the oil starvation could not be identified. The maintenance records for the engine were presumed to be onboard the airplane and destroyed by fire.
Postmortem toxicology testing by the FAA Forensic Sciences laboratory detected Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-THC) and metabolites in the pilot’s heart blood and urine. Delta-9-THC is the primary psychoactive chemical in cannabis, including marijuana, hashish, and other cannabis products. Marijuana is a federal Schedule I controlled substance, and the FAA considers its use by pilots unacceptable, regardless of state laws. The postmortem concentrations of the marijuana metabolites indicate that the pilot had used a cannabis product and may have been experiencing associated impairing effects at the time of the accident. However, the precise timing of his last cannabis use, and whether significant impairment was present, could not be determined from the toxicological evidence alone.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to oil starvation. The source of the oil starvation could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23FA238
- Event ID
- 20230521192203
- Case number
- ERA23FA238
- 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, 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: 8a2ed537e6ae20db9bc100619bfeb68a3c1b4a3d110d3624f46fe2d35c214bde; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:00:12.367Z.