CHI02FA009 · Beech 58
Beech 58 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Dupage Airport (DPA) to Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02FA009
- 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 58
- 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
- N7235R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dupage Airport (DPA), West Chicago, ILTo Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ), Dubuque, IA
- 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 final 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, performed
- Pilot in command › Minimum descent altitude, disregarded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At 0522 CST, the airplane was destroyed when it impacted trees and the embankment of a county road about 1.25 miles southeast of the destination airport. The flight had been cleared for and was flying inbound on the LOC RWY 31 instrument approach. At 0513, the observed weather was visibility 1/4 mile, fog, clouds broken 100 feet agl, overcast 500 feet agl, temperature 52 degrees F, and dew point 52 degrees F. The LOC RWY 31 approach plate indicated the airport elevation was 1,076 feet. The Minimum Descent Altitude for the Missed Approach was listed as 1,540 feet msl, and the visibility minimum was 1/2 mile. The pilot's flight duty log was found at the accident site. It indicated the pilot had been off duty on October 19, 2001. On October 20, 2001, he logged 16.1 hours for his duty day that included 4.3 hours of flight time. He was off duty on October 21, 2001. The pilot reported for flight duty at 1400 on October 22, 2001. The flight duty consisted of flying seven separate flight legs conducted under 14 CFR Part 135 regulations, and the eighth leg was a Part 91 positioning flight. The pilot's duty day on the day of the accident flight was 15.4 hours. The post accident inspection of the airplane revealed no preexisting anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot continued flight into known adverse weather and disregarded the minimum descent altitude. Additional factors were the conditions conducive to pilot fatigue, fog, and night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02FA009
- Event ID
- 20011030X02168
- Case number
- CHI02FA009
- 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: 02319eb5cdba4e7a1a75711cd0c8f6d22eb3159f900fe1c31aaedac689a8bdce; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:19:03.389Z.