Causey Aviation Service Beech 58 accident
Beech 58 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From IGX · Chapel Hill, NC to Rocky Mount Wilson Regional Airport (RWI)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA125
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 58
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 58
- 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
- N8230V
- Operator
- Causey Aviation Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From IGX · Chapel Hill, NCTo Rocky Mount Wilson Regional Airport (RWI)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); Tree(s)
- 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
- Object › Tree(s)
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot received a weather briefing and was advised en route, destination airport weather was unavailable. The pilot cancelled the IFR clearance after she observed runway and approach lights and also buildings to the left of the runway. She noted that the flight was high and began to descend. With the localizer frequency set, she noted the aircraft was left of course. After glancing at the Loran to confirm distance, the airplane collided with trees, power lines then the ground and came to rest about .4 nautical mile from the approach end of the runway that is equipped with a PAPI lights. The pilot reported there were no mechanical or navigational malfunctions. A sheriff deputy arriving 15 minutes after the accident reported it was, 'extremely foggy with low visibility.' The pilot did not have two-way radio communications with any person on the ground at the airport and there was no reported visibility at the airport at the time of the accident contrary to procedures specified in the operator's Operations Specifications. The uncommisioned ASOS on the field reported the visibility at 0453 and 0553 to be 1/4 mile with fog and a vertical visibility of 100 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent VFR flight into IMC conditions and the failure of the pilot to maintain altitude/clearance resulting in the in-flight collision with trees and unmarked power lines during a visual approach to the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA125
- Event ID
- 20001212X20706
- Case number
- MIA00LA125
- 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: 5bebe8912d0c6392ebe0989fcef8201655f9f0989d860193209ff830b2f24c08; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:42:38.742Z.