FTW98FA216 · Beagle Aircraft B-206
Beagle Aircraft B-206 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From F05 to Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA216
- 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
Beagle Aircraft B-206
- Aircraft type
- Beagle B-206
- 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
- N1885S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From F05To Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), Austin, 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
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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(vmc), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to witnesses, the twin-engine airplane took off and was climbing when a reduction in engine power was heard. The airplane was observed leveling off, and a left turn back to the airport was initiated. The airplane was observed in level flight for a few seconds and then it rolled to the left and impacted on a highway in a nose low attitude. A post impact fire destroyed the airplane. The logbooks for the airplane and engines were not made available during the investigation. The minimum controllable airspeed (Vmc) was listed at 76 mph in a brochure provided by the previous owner of the airplane. Examination of the left engine revealed that the #2 cylinder's exhaust valve had failed in fatigue. Closer examination of the exhaust valve and its guide revealed that a portion of the valve guide was missing. Carbon deposits on the valve stem provided evidence that the engine had been operated for some period of time in this condition. Examination of the left turbocharger revealed that it was not rotating at the time of the accident; however, its turbine wheel blades displayed foreign object damage, more than likely resulting from portions of the separated exhaust valve head passing through the turbocharger. Examination of the propellers revealed that neither propeller was in the feather position at the time of the impact, and the left propeller was being operated at no or low power at impact. The left propeller control lever was found in the aft (feather) position.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain the airplane's minimum controllable airspeed following a loss of left engine power after takeoff, which resulted in a loss of control. Contributing factors were the fractured exhaust valve guide on the left engine's # 2 cylinder, the fatigue failure of the #2 cylinder's exhaust valve, and subsequent failure of the left engine's turbocharger resulting from foreign object damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA216
- Event ID
- 20001211X10051
- Case number
- FTW98FA216
- 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: 4dff14bbc0e1dd170f89c55c0a02b0366db2f25080840b8f1dc1cc7aa739de92; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:35:21.228Z.