LAX97LA318 · Beech A23A
Beech A23A · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Cochise County Airport (P33) to 40E
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA318
- 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 A23A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 23
- 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
- N2339W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cochise County Airport (P33), WILCOX, AZTo 40E
- 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 go-around
- 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
- 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 obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was returning to the originating airport from his first solo cross-country flight. He reported that the stall warning horn came on before the airplane touched down, about 30 feet past the numbers, then the plane bounced into the air about 10 feet. The student said he realized that the airplane was at too slow an airspeed, and he attempted to execute a go-around by adding full power. The airplane climbed to approximately 20 feet in the air, then the stall warning horn sounded again. The airplane then banked to the left and impacted the ground. The student said he did not believe that there were any mechanical malfunctions that may have contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
the student pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing, and failure to maintain adequate airspeed during an attempted go-around, which resulted in a stall and impact with the terrain (runway).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA318
- Event ID
- 20001208X08882
- Case number
- LAX97LA318
- 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: 064aae25f325966ee35446ca045072bfbe2c3e4139950673ca46ea5da227d0b6; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:40:17.019Z.