CHI97FAMS2 · Beech 95-C55
Beech 95-C55 · Accident
From 5D8 · Marshall, MI to Taylor County Airport (MDZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97FAMS2
- 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
- 2 · 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 95-C55
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 55
- 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
- N242BS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 5D8 · Marshall, MITo Taylor County Airport (MDZ), Medford, WI
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Undetermined
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight was observed on radar to descend from 10,000 feet msl until radar contact was lost at about 3,000 feet msl. This location was approximately 13 miles west of Grand Haven, Michigan, over Lake Michigan. Debris was located in that general area on the surface of the lake. The airplane was presumed to have been destroyed. The pilot and one passenger were presumed to have sustained fatal injuries. There was no forecast for IFR conditions, severe weather warnings, or warnings for ice or turbulence along the route of flight. The pilot stated during a briefing that the airplane contained four hours of fuel. There were no distress calls recorded from the airplane. The airplane remained missing.
Probable cause
undetermined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97FAMS2
- Event ID
- 20001208X07673
- Case number
- CHI97FAMS2
- 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 1997-04-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2954ffceea1efe2a4e80d794e32c49b809db5e6b6a28f23e8795421ebc12e83e; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:59:17.605Z.