CHI03LA267 · Beech BE-76
Beech BE-76 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Watertown Regional Airport (ATY) to Quad City International Airport (MLI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA267
- 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 BE-76
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-76
- 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
- N1812S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Watertown Regional Airport (ATY), Watertown, SDTo Quad City International Airport (MLI), Moline, IL
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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 › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Spiral, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sustained substantial damage during a departure from controlled flight and subsequent recovery while in instrument meteorological conditions. The pilot reported that he was attempting to remain in visual meteorological conditions by deviating around thunderstorms. He reported the flight was at 7,000 feet mean seal level when the airplane entered a cloud. The pilot stated he "had been hand flying the airplane for several minutes when we hit a couple of waves of heavier turbulence followed by nearby lightning flash." The pilot reported the heavier turbulence resulted in an altitude loss of approximately 100 feet. The pilot was reportedly attempting to correct for the altitude loss when the airplane departed from controlled flight. The pilot reported he felt the airplane had entered a spiral/spin. He stated he was able to recover, returned to level flight, and continued on to his destination at the assigned altitude. He made an uneventful landing. He departed the airplane and discovered the airplane's wings were "wrinkled".
Probable cause
The pilot exceeded the design limits of the wings when he pulled out of an inadvertent spiral after he lost control of the airplane while operating in IMC conditions. Additional factors included the pilot's flight from VMC to IMC conditions, the turbulence in clouds, and lightning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA267
- Event ID
- 20030819X01365
- Case number
- CHI03LA267
- 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: 0d15a8256a182781e194cf7c9d666fa79b63f131f8ffb231674393d264db1b88; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:43:00.678Z.