FTW97FA174 · Beech V35
Beech V35 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Centennial Airport (APA) to Reed Hollow Ranch Airport (CO96)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97FA174
- 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 V35
- 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
- N831U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centennial Airport (APA), Englewood, COTo Reed Hollow Ranch Airport (CO96)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During final approach, the airplane collided with the 30-degree upslope side of an embankment about 15 feet below the runway threshold and 10 feet right of runway centerline. The airplane then traveled up and onto the runway and skidded 64 feet before coming to a halt on the right edge of the runway. Fire and rescue personnel said that when they arrived on the scene, the wind was gusting approximately 20 knots. A witness who saw the airplane on its landing approach said the pilot was making a 'steep' approach. He said it was 'very windy, really blowing, about 50 knots.' According to the pilot's wife, her husband had been flying out of the ranch airstrip about four years, often commuting every day to his business, and was thoroughly aware of the variable wind conditions in the area. She said he always made steep approaches at higher than normal airspeeds to compensate for the sudden changes in wind direction and velocity.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's failure to maintain control of the airplane. A factor was the terrain-induced turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97FA174
- Event ID
- 20001208X07898
- Case number
- FTW97FA174
- 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: 804104d9d096b14881606fb849d583f6a1f3a30719993b8312faf6fb36c1cab5; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:58:34.596Z.