NYC01FA215 · Beech BE-200
Beech BE-200 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Greene County/Lewis A. Jackson Regional Airport (I19) to Piqua Airport-Hartzell Field (I17)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01FA215
- 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
- 1 · 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 BE-200
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-200
- 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
- N18260
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greene County/Lewis A. Jackson Regional Airport (I19), Dayton, OHTo Piqua Airport-Hartzell Field (I17), Piqua, OH
- 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
- 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 object
- 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
- Tree(s); Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, high
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport rated pilot was attempting to land under visual flight rules for a scheduled passenger pick-up and subsequent charter flight. The pilot was communicating with a pilot at the airport, who was utilizing a hand held radio. The accident pilot reported he was not able to see the runway lights due to ground fog and continued to circle the airport for about 20 minutes. The pilot on the ground stated the airplane appeared to be about 1,500 feet above the ground when it circled, and then entered a downwind for runway 26. He was not able to hear or see the airplane as it flew away from the airport. He then began to hear the airplane during its final approach. The airplane's engines sounded normal. He then heard a "terrible sound of impact," followed by silence. When he arrived at the accident site, the airplane was fully engulfed in flames. The airplane impacted trees about 80-feet tall, located about 2,000 feet from, and on a 240 degree course to the approach end of runway 26. Several freshly broken tree limbs and trunks, up to 15-inches in diameter, were observed strewn along a debris path, which measured 370 feet. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any pre-impact malfunctions. The weather reported at an airport about 19 miles south-southeast of the accident site, included a visibility of 1 3/4 miles, in mist, with clear skies and a temperature and dew point of 17 degrees Celsius. Witnesses in the area of the accident site generally described conditions of "thick fog" and a resident who lived across from the accident site stated visibility was "near zero" and he could barely see across the road.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to attempt a visual landing under instrument meteorological conditions and his failure to maintain adequate altitude/clearance, which resulted in an in-flight collision with trees. A factor in this accident was the ground fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01FA215
- Event ID
- 20010830X01829
- Case number
- NYC01FA215
- 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: 42d157d3facbe6ab374312f2c9e42d6341619c2811b402124a2b09610df553d0; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:23:52.980Z.