DEN87MA168 · Beech D18S
Beech D18S · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Kalispell City Airport (S27) to Magee Airport (S77)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN87MA168
- 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
- 10 · 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 D18S
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 18
- 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
- N132E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kalispell City Airport (S27), Kalispell, MTTo Magee Airport (S77), COEUR D' ALENE, ID
- 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
- Maneuvering · turn to reverse direction
- 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 › Buzzing, performed
- Pilot in command › Judgment, poor
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT BORROWED THE ACFT TO FLY A MUSICAL GROUP TO KALISPELL FOR A PVT ENGAGEMENT AT LAKESIDE, MT, WHICH WAS APRX 15 MI SOUTH OF THE ARPT. THAT EVENING, THE GROUP BOARDED THE ACFT FOR THE RETURN FLT. AFTER TAKEOFF, THE ACFT WAS SEEN FLYING AT LOW ALT IN THE VCNTY OF WHERE THE MUSICAL GROUP HAD PERFORMED. THE ACFT WAS OBSERVED AT A VERY LOW ALT WHEN IT ENTERED AN ABRUPT CLIMB, THEN WENT INTO A WINGOVER OR HAMMERHEAD STALL TYPE OF MANEUVER & REVERSED DIRECTION. HOWEVER, BEFORE RECOVERING FROM THE ENSUING DIVE, THE ACFT CRASHED ON WOODED TERRAIN. WITNESSES SAID THE ENGS APPEARED TO BE RUNNING NORMALLY. A TEST OF THE PLT'S BLOOD SHOWED A SLIGHT AMOUNT OF ALCOHOL; HOWEVER, THERE WERE INDCNS THIS WAS DUE TO PUTREFACTION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN87MA168
- Event ID
- 20001213X31495
- Case number
- DEN87MA168
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1987-07-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1472b4f8bfd42acb7775d845358a681857d24cd012c6babd75db41d42e91eae2; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:05:10.295Z.