ATL97LA027 · Beech 35
Beech 35 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From 9W5 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL97LA027
- 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 35
- 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
- N4523V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 9W5To 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 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Empennage › Flutter
- Flight control, ruddervator › Out of balance
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, balancing, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Flutter of the empennage occurred during cruise flight. The pilot immediately reduced engine power, and the flutter subsided. Duration of the flutter was about three seconds. An examination of the empennage disclosed that the bulkhead at fuselage station (FS) 256.9 exhibited cracks at the four corners of the assembly. Also, buckling of the fuselage skin was noted adjacent to the damaged bulkhead. The ruddervators were removed from the airframe and balance checked in accordance with the Bonanza 35 Series Shop Manual. The left and right ruddervators exhibited static underbalance moments (trailing edge heavy) of 23.73 and 22.95 inch-pounds, respectively. According to the service manual, the required static underbalance range is 16.80 to 19.80 inch pounds. Both ruddervators had been reskinned (or replaced) and repainted. An unbroken paint seal around the screws (that attached the counterweights to the ruddervators) indicated that the counterweights had not been removed subsequent to repainting.
Probable cause
failure of maintenance personnel to balance the ruddervator assemblies after they had been reskinned and painted, which resulted in flutter and subsequent damage to the empennage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL97LA027
- Event ID
- 20001208X06996
- Case number
- ATL97LA027
- 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: 8416737d0cd16ebf90f4b1d3d156effaae03d025e7762256ba1004cbe795ca30; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:43:47.480Z.