MIA97LA001 · Beech 58
Paragon Express Beech 58 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport (JAN) to Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA001
- 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
- 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
- N4178S
- Operator
- Paragon Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport (JAN)To Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM), Memphis, TN
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was rolling down the runway, had reached rotation speed, rotated, and started climbing. After attaining a positive rate of climb, he selected gear up. The pilot had stated, 'then I felt that my right shoe lace was caught on something.' While the airplane was climbing, he bent down to fix his shoe lace. He estimated that 1-2 seconds had past while fixing his shoe lace. He thought that he had enough back pressure for the plane to climb, but stated, 'maybe I pushed the yoke a little forward with my chest.' When he was getting up from fixing his shoe lace, he noticed that the plane was going down. The airplane hit the runway, then bounced back in the air. While in the air, the pilot tried to get the gear down, but it would not come down. The airplane hit the runway again, and slid down the runway until it came to a stop. The pilot had also stated to the FAA, that he did not have any mechanical problems with the airplane or engines.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane resulting in an in flight collision with the runway. A factor in this accident was the pilot diverted his attention away from flying the airplane to fix his shoe lace.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA001
- Event ID
- 20001208X06942
- Case number
- MIA97LA001
- 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: 0a1e6523912c8a367149abf2af1fe92d17a88e528be8ec61f27e65aeef34744d; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:26:07.639Z.