NYC04CA019 · Beech A23
Beech A23 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Paruszewski Farm Strip (NJ30) to Spitfire Aerodrome (7N7)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04CA019
- 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 A23
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 23
- 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
- N8772M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Paruszewski Farm Strip (NJ30), Salem, NJTo Spitfire Aerodrome (7N7), Pedricktown, NJ
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, delayed
- Pilot in command › Proper climb rate, not obtained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While departing from runway 01, the airplane lifted off, about 1,000 feet down the 1,800-foot long wet turf runway. The pilot felt a "strong breeze, almost a tailwind," and the airplane began to settle downward, touching back down on the runway surface. The airplane then bounced back into the air, and would not climb out of ground effect. The pilot decided not to abort the takeoff, fearing that the nosewheel would sink into the muddy runway, and flip the airplane over. As the airplane continued past the departure end of the runway, the airplane still would not climb, and pilot performed a forced landing to a marsh area. After the accident, the pilot stated that he "should have aborted the takeoff when he first had the chance to." The pilot additionally stated that the maximum allowable gross weight of the airplane was 2,350 pounds, and the takeoff weight at the time of the accident was 2,240 pounds. Review of the Airplane Flight Manual revealed that the total takeoff ground roll, from a level, dry, hard surfaced runway, was about 1,248 feet. No charts were available to compute a ground roll distance from a wet turf runway. The winds reported by an airport located about 7 miles west of the accident site, at 1151, were from 150 degrees at 5 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's delay in aborting the takeoff after his failure to obtain a proper climb rate. Factors related to the accident were the tailwind conditions, and the wet turf runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04CA019
- Event ID
- 20031205X02000
- Case number
- NYC04CA019
- 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: 76012ae6420f6599ed91f55f3b9ccd113c8307eb9f6b4b8e3043d9339f43c02a; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:21:18.005Z.