NYC06FA040 · Beech B-55
Beech B-55 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Teterboro Airport (TEB) to Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC06FA040
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech B-55
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft B-55
- 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
- N64PW
- Operator
- George F. Baker III · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Teterboro Airport (TEB), Teterboro, NJTo Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK), Nantucket, MA
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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 collision with terrain/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 › Proper glidepath, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument rated pilot obtained a weather briefing from a flight service station (FSS), filed an instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan, and proceeded in a Beech B-55 on a return flight to his home airport. The flight was in radio and radar contact with air traffic control (ATC). As the airplane intercepted the localizer course for the instrument landing system (ILS) approach, the Approach controller vectored the airplane off the localizer for spacing. The controller then vectored the airplane back onto the localizer, and cleared the flight for the ILS approach. At that time, the airplane was approximately 2 miles prior to the final approach fix (FAF), at 300 feet above the crossing altitude, and a groundspeed of 140 knots. The controller advised the pilot to contact the local air traffic control tower (ATCT), but did not provide a frequency. The controller was not required to provide the frequency, and recalled that the airplane was based at the destination airport. The airplane crossed the FAF at 300 feet above the crossing altitude, at a groundspeed of 110 knots. The airplane tracked the localizer course above the glideslope, and then flew below the glideslope during the approach. The Automated Radar Terminal System (ARTS) generated the first of two Minimum Safe Altitude Warning (MSAW) alerts. At the time, the airplane was 600 to 700 feet agl; and a second MSAW alert was generated when the airplane was approximately 200 feet agl. The Approach and ATCT controllers were required to provide those warnings to the accident pilot; however, they did not. At 200 feet, the pilot asked the Approach controller for the local ATCT frequency. The Approach controller advised the pilot of the frequency, but radar contact and radio communication were lost when the airplane impacted the Atlantic Ocean approximately 1 mile from the airport. Night instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time, with an overcast ceiling of 400 feet, and visibility 2 1/2 miles in light rain and mist.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain the proper glidepath during the instrument approach, which resulted in controlled flight into water. Factors were the failure of the air traffic controllers to issue minimum safe altitude warnings, night lighting conditions, and a low ceiling.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC06FA040
- Event ID
- 20051207X01950
- Case number
- NYC06FA040
- 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: 457869106cba2e2e9104c65cf6bbf04ea618de5b07eafe912adc99b159e8bc89; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:43:45.287Z.