Plane crashes after running out of fuel in Nevada.
A Model 35 Bonanza similar to the accident aircraft. (Photo by Tom Fleischman)
A small, single-engine plane crashed yesterday (March 12, 2010) at 4:30 PM local time while trying to reach Boulder City Airport (BVU), Nevada. The pilot and sole occupant of the Beechcraft K35 Bonanza (registration N5392E) was killed in the crash.
Investigators were not at the scene of the accident yesterday, but were expected to arrive today. Authorities reported that the aircraft was flying from Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT) in Phoenix, Arizona to Henderson Executive Airport (HND) in Las Vegas, Nevada. While the aircraft was flying over Lake Mead, to the east of its destination, the pilot radioed in to air traffic controllers that he had run out of fuel. The nearest field at that point was BVU, which the pilot tried to make but failed. According to a witness near the accident site, the plane hit some wires before crashing into the desert a few hundred yards from the airport. The aircraft is registered to Brett Dean Beuckens, who was the pilot of the aircraft.
It is not clear why the aircraft ran out of fuel and, at this point, the possibilities are quite a few. Something may have been wrong with the fuel system or the pilot may have committed a mistake with the fuel (such as checking it improperly or managing it the wrong way during the flight). As soon as the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) releases its preliminary report, I´ll post an update post with the latest information.
Popularity: 26% [?]
Interested in knowing why Brett Beuckens ran out of fuel.
Eve Wichner,
I will keep an eye out on investigation reports for this accident and update you as soon as I can. In the meantime, there can be many reasons why this can happen. Sometimes its a fuel management issue during the flight; pilots use a control known as the mixture to manage fuel. Other times pilots feel they are close to make it and aren’t. And then there are a lot of times when something goes wrong in the plane and there is really nothing the pilot can do. Again, I’ll update as soon as the NTSB preliminary comes out this week or next.