FTW98FA192 · Beech BE-58
Beech BE-58 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Grand Prairie Municipal Airport (GPM) to Kerrville / Kerr County Airport at Louis Schreiner Field (ERV)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA192
- 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
- 3 · 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 BE-58
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-58
- 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
- N60UU
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Prairie Municipal Airport (GPM), GRAND PRAIRE, TXTo Kerrville / Kerr County Airport at Louis Schreiner Field (ERV), TX
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
The non-instrument rated private pilot lost control of the twin engine airplane while attempting to divert to an airport with a lighted runway in dark night conditions with overcast skies and mist. During a weather briefing 4 hours before departure, the pilot was briefed on weather deteriorating near midnight and that runway 12/30 was closed at the destination airport. Upon arrival at the destination, the pilot made several attempts to activate runway lights for runway 20 before he inquired and was informed by the controller that runway 20 did not have runway lights. The pilot requested a diversion to the closest airport with runway lights and at least a 3,500 foot runway. The pilot was given a heading to an airport 18 miles away. This was the last transmission acknowledged by the pilot. The airplane impacted terrain in a steep nose down attitude. Examination of the airframe and engines did not reveal evidence of any structural or mechanical anomalies.
Probable cause
The non-instrument rated pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control due to spatial disorientation. Factors were the dark night conditions, overcast skies, and the pilot's inadequate preflight planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA192
- Event ID
- 20001211X09848
- Case number
- FTW98FA192
- 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 1998-04-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 92285415d2726d2094799dec299c8947403830bf8653e91b087e14bf4b5e45fb; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:36:42.636Z.