FTW04CA218 · Beech BE-58
Beech BE-58 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From TSO7 · Dry Creek, TX to Groveton Trinity County Airport (33R)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04CA218
- 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-58
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-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
- N8140R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From TSO7 · Dry Creek, TXTo Groveton Trinity County Airport (33R), Groveton, 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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 on ground/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 › Ground loop/swerve, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 4,940-hour commercial pilot entered the traffic pattern for runway 16 ( 3,500-foot long and 60-foot wide asphalt runway), and did not observe any obstructions on the runway as he crossed over the threshold at an airspeed of approximately 100 knots. When the twin-engine airplane touched down, the pilot spotted three deer on the left side of the runway approximately 200 yards in front of him, and he applied "light right rudder to avoid contact." The deer continued to cross the runway from left to right, directly in front of the airplane's roll-out path, and the pilot applied "heavy left rudder and brake, and light right brake to slow and pull the aircraft to the left." Subsequently, the airplane exited the left side of the runway, and impacted trees in a small ravine located about 60-feet from the edge of the runway. The pilot also reported the deer were hiding in the 3-foot tall grass located along both sides of the runway. The pilot added that after he exited the airplane he walked approximately 1/4-mile to the main ramp for assistance. Upon returning to the airplane, he observed a small fire that gradually intensified and consumed the airplane. A review of published airport information revealed there was a remark that stated deer were on and in the vicinity of the airport. The pilot stated that the airport was not fenced.
Probable cause
The pilot's intentional ground loop to avoid colliding with deer that entered the runway during the landing roll. A contributing factor was the tall grass adjacent to the runway that prevented detection of the deer.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04CA218
- Event ID
- 20040907X01354
- Case number
- FTW04CA218
- 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: fb7d474658b6790b2c2011c3d01f9c3e2a0f5efab2dc1707ab0a76e2b9683ab1; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:52:33.865Z.