NYC98FA180 · Beech A23-24
Beech A23-24 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Elmira Corning Regional Airport (ELM) to N01 · NEW LONDON, PA
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98FA180
- 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
- 5 · 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 A23-24
- 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
- N453D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Elmira Corning Regional Airport (ELM), Elmira, NYTo N01 · NEW LONDON, PA
- 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 · climb to 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Two non-instrument-rated private pilots and three passengers decided to return home after a weekend visit. A friend tried to dissuade them from flying because of the existing weather conditions, but was told they had to return home because, among other things, the children's school started the next day. The friend then offered to drive home with them, and bring their rental car back. The pilots declined, but assured him they would not fly if the weather was too bad. At the airport, one of the pilots was seen checking the weather computer a number of times, and the group was noted as being 'pretty concerned about the weather.' The airplane departed Elmira where the weather was reported at 1622 hours as 3,600 foot overcast with light rain, and climbed to about 8,500 feet into, or near instrument meteorological conditions. The radar track showed the aircraft transitioning from a climbing right turn approximately 8,500 feet to a rapidly descending right turn. An altitude loss of 1,600 feet in 12 seconds was recorded. It was observed descending from a cloud layer, in a spin, with part of the left wing missing, just before impacting terrain. The pilot-owner was in the left front seat, and the other pilot was in the right front seat. At the time of the accident, the airplane was near its maximum gross weight. Post-crash metallurgical examination of left wing spar fracture surfaces revealed features typical of overstress separation and no pre-existing crack features.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's attempted flight into known adverse weather conditions, his failure to maintain control of the aircraft, and his exceeding the airframe design limits resulting in separation of the outboard left wing. Contributing factors were clouds, self induced pressure, spatial disorientation, and the lack of instrument certification/experience of both the pilot and pilot/passenger.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98FA180
- Event ID
- 20001211X11145
- Case number
- NYC98FA180
- 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: 80bba66b659d838180cfd8f13bcee075bc3ae6ff8da9743d8dd5791f1c432a05; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:26:31.688Z.