FTW02LA129 · Beech F35
Beech F35 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Clovis Municipal Airport (CVN) to Hutchinson County Airport (BGD)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA129
- 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 F35
- 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
- N4257B
- Operator
- Ronnie A. McMurray · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clovis Municipal Airport (CVN), Clovis, NMTo Hutchinson County Airport (BGD), Borger, TX
- 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 · 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
- 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
- Empennage › Flutter
- Flight control, ruddervator › Out of balance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while in level cruise flight at 140 knots indicated airspeed, at an altitude of 5,500 feet mean sea level (msl), the airplane encountered "clear air turbulence." The pilot stated that at the time of the accident, the airplane autopilot system was engaged, and his hands were not on the cockpit controls. During the accident, the airplane "was suddenly thrust nose high and vertical." The pilot then "pushed the nose [of the airplane] over," and recovered control of the airplane from the unusual attitude. The pilot continued the flight to his intended destination and landed without incident. Examination of the airplane revealed that the aft fuselage exhibited extensive skin wrinkling and tearing between the fuselage station (FS) 233.5 and FS 256.9 bulkheads. The left fuselage side exhibited a compression wrinkle extending from the bottom of the FS 256.9 bulkhead diagonally up and forward toward the top of the FS 233.5 bulkhead. The right fuselage side exhibited a compression wrinkle extending from the top of the FS 256.9 bulkhead diagonally down and forward toward the bottom of the FS 233.5 bulkhead. The bottom skin exhibited a compression wrinkle that extended from the middle of the FS 256.9 bulkhead forward and outward toward FS 233.5 bulkhead. The right ruddervator was 20.98 inch-pounds static underbalanced. According to the manufacturer, the static underbalance weight range is 16.8 to 19.8 inch pounds.
Probable cause
Flutter due to the improper balance of the ruddervator, which resulted in structural damage to the aft fuselage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA129
- Event ID
- 20020502X00616
- Case number
- FTW02LA129
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-03-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d9a9bebc3e36f45d6b47fe7d3aa9164eda519d56e825f7021880c381ef953287; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:03:26.557Z.