NYC01FA109 · Beech A-36
Beech A-36 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Newport State Airport (UUU) to Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01FA109
- 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
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 A-36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft A-36
- 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
- N55588
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Newport State Airport (UUU), Middletown, RITo Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK), Frederick, MD
- 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
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After departure, the pilot contacted air traffic control and stated, "I've got a bit of a problem here on takeoff I'm gonna have to go back and close a cowl flap." A witness observed the airplane flying low and slow, about 200 feet above the ground, on a tight downwind leg for the runway. When the airplane turned onto the base leg, it was about 100 feet above the ground, "still flying very slow on the verge of a stall." The airplane then nosed over, "picked up airspeed," and turned sharply to the left at an angle of about 70 degrees. As the airplane passed the extended centerline of the runway, it leveled off and full power was applied to the engine. The airplane then descended, and impacted buckets of rope dip, which was a black waterbased protective coating for rope, and barrels of nautical lines, before coming to rest upright against metal lobster traps located in a field. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the upper left hand side cowling was observed opened and undamaged. Examination of the latching mechanism for the left hand side cowling revealed no damage to the forward latch. The rear latch exhibited damage to one half of the clamshell. Rope dip was observed on the upper half of the left hand cowling cover, the left hand side of the engine crankcase, and on the rearward section of the left hand side bottom cowling. No rope dip was observed on the right hand side engine cowling or crankcase. The pilot had flown with a flight instructor 5 days prior to the accident. During that flight, the flight instructor observed that the left side engine cowl cover "became loose and opened all the way," while the airplane was on the ground. The pilot remarked to the flight instructor that he thought he had secured it. He then shut the engine down, and re-secured the cowl cover. While the airplane was in maintenance the day prior to the accident, the pilot mentioned to a mechanic that he had been having problems with the left engine cowling cover; however, the mechanic did not observe any abnormalities with the cover. The recorded winds about the time of the accident were from 360 degrees at 12 knots, gusting to 21 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed while landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01FA109
- Event ID
- 20010504X00877
- Case number
- NYC01FA109
- 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, coordinates. 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: 09ceb07f962911a5b8bb9805e326405e018ced592365081f14010515a7744c3d; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:34:51.350Z.