FTW98LA245 · Cessna 320B
Cessna 320B · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Aransas County Airport (RKP) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA245
- 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
Cessna 320B Possible conflict
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 320
- 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
- N986J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aransas County Airport (RKP)To not recorded
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Rockport, TX, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The twin-engine Cessna 320B airplane impacted two parked, unoccupied, single engine airplanes following a loss of control during a go around. When the airplane was on short final approximately 40 feet agl, the pilot initiated a go around. He first advanced the throttles and then the propeller controls. According to the pilot, the engines seemed to 'bog down' and then the right engine seemed to clear first or to produce more power than the left engine. The airplane began to bank to the left and lose airspeed and altitude. The pilot stated that he 'did not have sufficient time or altitude to correct the situation,' and the airplane impacted a taxiway with its nose and left wing and slid onto a ramp where it collided with two parked airplanes. Advancing the propeller controls to the high rpm position was the fifth item listed in the 'Before Landing' checklist in the Cessna 320B owner's manual. The pilot had a total of 15 hours flight time in multiengine airplanes of which 4.3 hours were in the Cessna 320B.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during a go around which resulted in an inadvertent stall. Factors were the pilot's lack of experience in the make and model aircraft, his failure to follow the before landing checklist, and his improper use of the powerplant controls.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA245
- Event ID
- 20001211X10092
- Case number
- FTW98LA245
- 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: d6c0fc9197ff27679661dd484055f4988b260323cea5d9c9eae475d00162d54a; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:44:14.429Z.