CHI97FA300 · Beech T34B
Beech T34B · Accident: abrupt maneuver during initial climb
From 3FM to 3FM
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97FA300
- 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 T34B
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 34
- 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
- N777SU
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3FMTo 3FM
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Ostentatious display
- Pilot in command › Stall, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses said the surplus military trainer took off, retracted its landing gear, and accelerated as it flew about 10 to 15-feet above the runway. As it crossed the end of the departure runway it pitched up '...nearly vertical... .' The airplane continued to climb until it stalled, yaw-rolled to the left, pitched down, and changed its heading about 135-degrees. The airplane descended toward the ground at a witness reported 45-degree angle. One witness stated the engine was running at' ...full power... .' The airplane collided with the ground, slid to a stop, and a fire occurred. The on-scene investigation revealed no mechanical anomalies with the airframe, flight control system, or engine. The pilot had flown this airplane about 11.1 hours total time since receiving a checkout in the airplane by a pilot without a flight instructors certificate about 3-months before the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed which resulted in a stall. Also causal was the pilot's ostentatious display.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97FA300
- Event ID
- 20001208X08802
- Case number
- CHI97FA300
- 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: 6c5146caee08a7e371dc33e1f2c246337cb1e5478c6f0f0d421b496598b66e07; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:48:26.035Z.