CHI01FA247 · Beech C35
Beech C35 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From John H Batten Airport (RAC) to Wittman Regional Airport (OSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01FA247
- 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
- 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 C35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N35BJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John H Batten Airport (RAC), Racine, WITo Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), Oshkosh, WI
- 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 · VFR pattern base
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he was on the approach to runway 27. He said he was on a right hand base turn to final with a high rate of descent. The pilot said, "I misjudged the descent profile and flared too late. The aircraft continued the descent and struck the runway." Several witnesses observed the airplane in a right-hand base leg to final for runway 27. One witness said he saw the airplane rocking real bad. The left wing dipped down. The witness said he lost sight of the airplane behind a building, but heard the airplane impact the ground. Another witness also saw the airplane in an "extreme close right base to runway 27". The witness said, "He had his power back and he was in an extreme bank [of] about 60 degrees. The airplane stalled and from the right wing low attitude, he went to a left wing low attitude. The aircraft at this time was on a 260-degree heading. The left wing came down. It (the airplane) was coming down in a nose low, left wing down position." The witness said, "The left wingtip hit the ground approximately at the VASI lights. It crinkled up very nicely and absorbed a lot of energy, and as it was doing that, it started to cartwheel. The engine was the second thing to hit. It (the airplane) left its prop[eller] where the engine hit. Then the aircraft continued to cartwheel but now flattened out, so as it hit the right wing tip, the fuselage started settling into the ground. Then it slid backwards for a brief period of time." An examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed which resulted in an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01FA247
- Event ID
- 20010731X01569
- Case number
- CHI01FA247
- 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: a24d316def54fcf1fd1249768f3408a6ea55ee1af2300c75a00582388aff85c9; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:53:23.198Z.