DEN00LA058 · Beech A23A
Beech A23A · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT) to Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (RWL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00LA058
- 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
Beech A23A
- 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
- N2337W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT), Grand Junction, COTo Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (RWL)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 object
- 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 › Aborted landing, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the pilot approached Rawlins, Wyoming, he tried contacting the airport on UNICOM several times but without success. He circled the airport several times looking for the wind sock but did not see one. He then decided to land on 'the upslope runway [10].' Halfway down the runway, the pilot applied brakes and then realized the airplane could not be stopped before reaching the end of the runway. He aborted the landing. During the climbout, the airplane struck a fence 100 feet beyond the departure end of the runway. It then struck the ground and slid another 100 feet. Winds recorded at Rawlins at 1250, 10 minutes after the accident, were from 250 degrees at 25 knots. Landing on runway 10 presented a 30 degree right quartering tailwind with a component approximately 23 knots. Density altitude was computed to be 7,157 feet msl, and the maximum expected rate of climb was computed to be 345 feet per minute.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to abort the landing in a timely manner. Factors were the tailwind and high density altitude, resulting in inadequate climb performance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00LA058
- Event ID
- 20001212X20614
- Case number
- DEN00LA058
- 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: 47f4c0fa9844628baea1270a48aa05a43843e2a1527e5f8a53a492c435d7dadb; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:03:07.524Z.