IAD98FA054 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF) to Moore County Airport (SOP)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98FA054
- 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
- 4 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N72141
- Operator
- Howard L. Kidman · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF), Buffalo, NYTo Moore County Airport (SOP), Pinehurst, NC
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was cruising on a southerly heading at 13,000 feet, in instrument meteorological conditions, when, over a 23-second period, it turned toward the west, descended about 1,200 feet, then broke up. The last 3-point smoothed ground speed calculation for the airplane indicated 242 knots. Winds aloft were from the east, about 10 knots. The airplane's maximum operating speed was 167 knots indicated, and maximum maneuvering speed was 141 knots indicated. At the time of the accident, the airplane was in conditions conducive to icing. The airframe anti-icing system was inoperative, and it was undetermined whether the engine and pitot ice protection systems had been activated. The horizontal stabilizer and the wings exhibited markings consistent with downward overstress separation. The flight originated from Hamilton, Ontario, and stopped at Buffalo, New York, before continuing. An AIRMET, calling for icing, was in effect, but not mentioned during the Ontario weather briefing. In Buffalo, no flight service station services were requested or provided. Flight into icing conditions in the accident airplane was prohibited, and the procedure was to turn back or change altitude to escape the icing.
Probable cause
The pilot's spatial disorientation, his subsequent loss of control of the airplane, and his overload of the horizontal stabilizer during a recovery attempt. Factors include the pilot's continued flight into icing conditions, his lack of airspeed control, and the lack of an AIRMET advisory from the weather briefer.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98FA054
- Event ID
- 20001211X10100
- Case number
- IAD98FA054
- 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: ebc072c76997108d5cbb36e6ea6fa55e127af75408d150beb5e6f17b0567b189; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:35:49.039Z.