BFO96FA022 · Beech 58
MRD Leasing Beech 58 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL) to Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO96FA022
- 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
- 3 · 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 58
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 58
- 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
- N721MD
- Operator
- MRD Leasing
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL), OHTo Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU), RALEIGH-DURHAM, NC
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Takeoff
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › IFR procedure, improper
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Proper climb rate, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot received a weather briefing and filed an IFR flight plan for a night/cross-country flight. For departure from runway 24R, he was given clearance for a right turn after takeoff to a heading of 350, then he was cleared for takeoff. The tower controller stated that after the airplane was airborne, he instructed the pilot to contact departure control. The pilot acknowledged, then no further transmission was received from the plane. The controller last saw the airplane at an altitude of about 100 to 200 feet AGL, near the end of the 6,198 foot runway, when it began a right turn to a northerly heading. He then diverted his attention to other work. Subsequently, the airplane crashed on a lake north of the airport. Two passengers survived. They noted no problem with the pilot or airplane before water contact. No preimpact mechanical malfunction or failure of the airplane was found. The pilot of another airplane, who departed shortly after the accident flight, reported he was disoriented when he turned north during departure. He stated there was no visible horizon, overcast clouds blocked light from above, and there were no lights from below. Due to darkness over the lake, he had to '...stay on the instruments...until above the overcast.'
Probable cause
the pilot's improper IFR procedure, by failing to maintain a positive rate of climb (and terrain clearance) after takeoff. Factors relating to the accident were: darkness, and the lack of visual references over water and under overcast cloud conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO96FA022
- Event ID
- 20001207X04808
- Case number
- BFO96FA022
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 90392672c53bf4eb331261203464c9e094c1e87a5476c7e68c1b2ab1738dc7d6; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:31:34.749Z.