CHI96LA081 · Beech 58
Beech 58 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA081
- 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
- 0 · 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 Narrative disagrees
- 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
- N4108S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR), Grand Rapids, MITo not recorded
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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
- Pilot in command › Visual separation, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was taxiing onto a parking ramp when his airplane collided with a parked airplane. The pilot said a hangar on the ramp's edge had 15 floodlights along its top edge, and a dark area on its middle section. He said the flood lights, his airplane's taxilight, and falling snow caused light reflection that made it difficult to see the parked airplane. He said the dark color of the airplane his airplane struck blended in with the hangar's dark area. An FAA PMI confirmed the pilot's statement about the floodlights and the fact that no taxiway or ramp markings were available.
Probable cause
was the pilot not maintaining visual separation with the parked airplanes. A factor in this accident was the pilot's over- confidence in his personal ability to taxi onto the parking ramp with the snowfall he was encountering.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA081
- Event ID
- 20001208X05117
- Case number
- CHI96LA081
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-01-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9a89e8a8f93e3adbe6543885ce7b46a126bc006d51e4678dffad56578590df8a; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:54:20.512Z.