ATL97LA069 · Beech 33
Beech 33 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Fulton County Airport Brown Field (KFTY) to Destin Executive Airport (KDTS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL97LA069
- 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 33
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 33
- 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
- N5863S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fulton County Airport Brown Field (KFTY), Atlanta, GATo Destin Executive Airport (KDTS), Destin, FL
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, annual inspection, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
- Propeller governor control, linkage › Disconnected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument flight was cleared to a cruise altitude of 6000 feet. A few minutes into the flight, the pilot experienced a reduction in engine power. He declared an emergency and attempted to restore the engine to full operating power. The pilot said he increased the fuel mixture lever to full rich, turned on the fuel system boost pump, but could not restore full engine power. After completing the emergency procedures, the pilot was instructed, by air traffic control, to turn to a 125 degree magnetic heading for vectors to the nearest airport. After descending below the clouds, the pilot established a final approach for the emergency landing. As he flared for the touchdown on the runway, the pilot recalled that the aircraft stall warning horn was blaring. The pilot also stated that the flight controls were barely responsive as the left wing collided with the ground. The examination of the engine assembly disclosed that the propeller pitch control arm, at the propeller governor, had separated from the propeller governor. A review of service data disclosed that a service bulletin had been issued to prevent the separation of the governor control arm from the assembly. This service bulletin had not been accomplished on the accident airplane. The governor control arm separation occurred four flight hours after the last annual inspection.
Probable cause
The inadequate maintenance inspection of the airplane that resulted in the disconnection of the propeller governor linkage and the subsequent reduction in engine power. The pilot also failed to maintain flying speed that resulted in an inadvertent stall during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL97LA069
- Event ID
- 20001208X07669
- Case number
- ATL97LA069
- 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: 9afd576e0bf483987379696f9c3f24f4b39edfdce3151878304d6334ffa48099; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:51:20.689Z.