WPR23LA262 · Beech P35
Beech P35 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during landing
From Lampson Field (1O2) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA262
- 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 P35
- 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
- N9520Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lampson Field (1O2), Lakeport, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1962)
- 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
- Landing
- 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 (partial)
- 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 pilot reported that he departed with 74 gallons of fuel onboard for the flight of about 84 nm. After an uneventful flight the pilot selected the runway that was favored by prevailing winds. He then extended the landing gear and reduced power while the airplane was on the downwind leg of the airport traffic pattern over the ocean. The pilot encountered a partial loss of engine power as he turned to the base leg and the airplane began to descend from 800 ft above ground level. He performed emergency procedures for a loss of power from memory, but the engine continued to run at low power. Unable to maintain altitude, the airplane impacted the ocean and sank. The pilot and passenger, who were both seriously injured, egressed the airplane and swam to shore. Subsequent efforts to locate and recover the airplane were unsuccessful.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because the airplane was not located and recovered.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA262
- Event ID
- 20230710192580
- Case number
- WPR23LA262
- 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: d527d4af849f93f9fa08e8b66df9ac5daf96e818cbf24cccc55d26470ae3e09f; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:50:08.787Z.