CHI00FA057 · Beech D-95A TRAVELAIR D-95A TRAV
Beech D-95A TRAVELAIR D-95A TRAV · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Huntsville International Airport (HSV) to Ford Airport (IMT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00FA057
- 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
- 1 · 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 D-95A TRAVELAIR D-95A TRAV
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft D-95
- 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
- N5918S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Huntsville International Airport (HSV), Huntsville, ALTo Ford Airport (IMT), Iron Mountain, MI
- 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
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted the wooded terrain at approximately 0340 cst about 7.8 nm from the airport while inbound on the localizer course of an ILS Rwy 1 approach. The FAF was located at 5.0 nm from the runway. On the day prior to the accident, the pilot had flown a Part 135 flight that had departed at 1732 and landed at 2227. The pilot reported to ground personnel that the airplane's heater had not worked during the flight and that he was cold. The heater was serviced and successfully ground checked for operation. The Part 91 positioning flight departed at 2339. The pilot reported to ATC that the airplane was established on the localizer course at 3,200 feet msl, and that the airplane was picking up '... some pretty good moderate ice... .' The wreckage path covered about 400 feet on a heading of about 002 degrees. The fuselage, cockpit, and inboard wings were consumed by fire. The landing gear was extended. The examination of the airplane revealed no pre-existing anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot failed to maintain a proper glidepath and obstacle clearance during an instrument approach. Additional factors to the accident included the dark night, icing conditions, flight into known adverse weather, and conditions conducive to pilot fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00FA057
- Event ID
- 20001212X20330
- Case number
- CHI00FA057
- 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: be6091aa9652b8273f3a9607d0ec23a62c29461d1884715d2ee00bd2aabd4b4a; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:32:28.320Z.