Charter 1 Beech BE-200 accident
Beech BE-200 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Port Isabell, TX to Houston, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05LA034
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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-200
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-200
- 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
- N648KA
- Operator
- Charter 1
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Port Isabell, TXTo Houston, 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While attempting to depart from the 3,500-foot long grass airstrip with a 14 knot quartering tailwind, the 5,800-hour pilot reported that at an airspeed of approximately 95 knots, "the airplane yawed left and rolled left abruptly as the aircraft came off the ground briefly." The airplane settled back onto the ground, before again climbing back into the air approximately 20 degrees left of the runway heading. Subsequently, the airplane’s landing gear struck tree tops before it impacted the ground. A passenger added that he "noticed the flaps were up during takeoff." Approximately three minutes after the accident, a weather reporting station located 5.6 nautical miles southwest of the accident site reported wind from 010 degrees at 14 knots. Examination of the engines revealed rotational scoring throughout the first and second stage turbines. No mechanical anomalies were observed.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control as result of his improper runway selection for takeoff. A contributing factor was the prevailing right quartering tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05LA034
- Event ID
- 20041215X01992
- Case number
- DFW05LA034
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: e6597df25f8be83f2f7a65dd376ee3ad59bd53a84b0d76db5dee34681eb0e2b5; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:10:57.559Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N648KA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.