MIA97IA151 · Beech 100
Beech 100 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Kinston Regional Jetport At Stallings Field (ISO) to Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97IA151
- 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
- Incident
- 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 100
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 100
- 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
- N402G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kinston Regional Jetport At Stallings Field (ISO), Kinston, NCTo Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO), Greensboro, NC
- 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 · climb to 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Manufacturer › Condition(s)/step(s) not listed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 15 minutes after departure while climbing through 12,000 to 12,500 feet, at a cabin differential pressure of 4.3 psi, the pilot's flight compartment side 'D' window separated with a resulting rapid decompression. The pilot diverted to the destination airport and landed uneventfully. Post incident examination of the failed window revealed evidence of preexisting cracks that originated at the external surface of the window at the transition radius between the window flange and the center portion of the window. The failed window had accumulated 4,008 hours since replacement at failure and was the latest design. Review of the inspection requirements for the window which is scheduled to occur every 600 hours revealed that the metal retaining ring is not required to be removed for inspection.
Probable cause
Inadequate inspection procedures by the airframe manufacturer for failure to require removal of the metal retaining ring to inspect the entire area of the window for cracks.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97IA151
- Event ID
- 20001208X07769
- Case number
- MIA97IA151
- 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: e6eaa07a5f150de0a48936270be3f67adc852b48463ab428958c37d62a9ba5b8; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:01:08.256Z.