NYC01FA178 · Beech 58-TC
Beech 58-TC · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF) to Sidney Municipal Airport (N23)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01FA178
- 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
- 3 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech 58-TC
- 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
- N117HS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF), Buffalo, NYTo Sidney Municipal Airport (N23), Sidney, 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 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
- Approach · IFR missed 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 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 › IFR procedure, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had conducted two VOR approaches to the airport, each to a missed approach. After the second missed approach, the controller queried the pilot if the missed approach was due to fog. The pilot advised the controller that "…there's pockets in and out but I can't get the runway in sight..." The pilot then requested, and was cleared, for a third approach. The controller requested the pilot to contact the advisory frequency at the airport, which the pilot complied. No further radio transmissions were received from the airplane. The airplane came to rest in a wooded area about 2 miles northwest of the airport, at an elevation of 1,679 feet msl. The wreckage path was orientated on a 245-degree bearing. The missed approach point for the VOR approach was located at the runway threshold. The missed approach procedure required the pilot to initiate a climbing right turn to 3,400 feet, then proceed back to the northeast, to an intersection located about 5.2 miles northeast of the airport, and hold. An FAA inspector flew the runway 25 VOR approach the day of the accident. No abnormalities with the navigation or airport facilities were noted. Review of the Airport Facility Directory revealed an airport remark for N23 that stated, "Numerous hills surround arpt up to 800 ft above arpt elevation." Witnesses described the weather about the time of the accident as "heavy fog" with the mountains surrounding the airport completely obscured.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow IFR procedures which resulted in a collision with rising terrain. Factors related to the accident were the rising terrain and fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01FA178
- Event ID
- 20010727X01541
- Case number
- NYC01FA178
- 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: f4f1379a39ee39dcf4c6f630604873e9e44d123fa9aae5ddc6e2e15a7a94c047; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:27:32.529Z.