DEN93FA053 · Beech 65-A90
Arkansas Flight Management Beech 65-A90 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From an unrecorded airport to Huntington Municipal Airport (HHG)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN93FA053
- 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
- 2 · 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 65-A90
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 65
- 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
- N530N
- Operator
- Arkansas Flight Management
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Huntington Municipal Airport (HHG), Huntington, IN
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Proper climb rate, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
APPROXIMATELY 7 MINUTES AFTER TAKEOFF, THE AIRPLANE COLLIDED WITH TERRAIN APRX 3 MILES FROM THE DEPARTURE AIRPORT. THE ACCIDENT SITE WAS 1,100 FT MSL; THE HIGHEST TERRAIN IN THE AREA IS 1,400 FT MSL. THE DEPARTURE AIRPORT ELEVATION IS 643 FT MSL. ACCORDING TO WITNESSES, THE AIRPLANE DISAPPEARED INTO CLOUDS AT APRX 200 FT FOLLOWING TAKEOFF, AND THAT THE HILLS TO THE SOUTHEAST WERE OBSCURED BY CLOUDS. THE PILOT HAD ABOUT 4 HOURS SLEEP THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ACCIDENT FLIGHT.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO ESTABLISH AN ADEQUATE CLIMB RATE. FACTORS IN THE ACCIDENT WERE: PILOT FATIGUE FROM LACK OF SLEEP, AND THE WEATHER CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN93FA053
- Event ID
- 20001211X12370
- Case number
- DEN93FA053
- 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: dcf51901fcb43d762279d3c023e4b9829854230ca8072f00077d656ca2052d9d; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:35:11.730Z.