U.S. Check Beech BE-58 incident
Beech BE-58 · Incident: fire en route
From Bradley International Airport (BDL) to New York Stewart International Airport (SWF)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00IA131
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Beech BE-58
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-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
- N9044V
- Operator
- U.S. Check
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bradley International Airport (BDL)To New York Stewart International Airport (SWF), Newburgh, NY
- 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
- 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
- Fire
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Electrical system, circuit breaker › Shorted
- Manufacturer › Information insufficient
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Windsor Locks, CT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot smelled smoke after takeoff. He returned to the airport, landed, and taxied to the ramp. During the postflight inspection, the rotating beacon power wire was found to be burnt, the entire length of the airplane. The initiating event was suspected to be a failed beacon motor, which then initiated a short circuit; however, it was not positively confirmed. Further inspection revealed that a holding screw for the electroluminescent panel had contacted the rotating beacon switch/circuit breaker, and fractured the switch. The switch/breaker was attached to a solid buss bar behind the panel, and the screw position was directly below the toggle portion of the switch. The manufacturer's parts catalog called for the use of a specific screw, but did not give a dash number for the screw's length.
Probable cause
Inadequate screw length information provided by the manufacturer, which allowed an inadvertent installation of a holding screw that was too long, and the subsequent fracture of the switch/circuit breaker. Factors included a short circuit of the beacon motor, and the location of the holding screw position within the electroluminescent panel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00IA131
- Event ID
- 20001212X21096
- Case number
- NYC00IA131
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-05-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a36e81216db02cadaabeeecbe2576efb391195d391fc1b655a66704c3b72af89; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:37:44.729Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N9044V; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.