NYC07FA056 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) to Essex County Airport (CDW)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07FA056
- 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 A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N711SK
- Operator
- Andrew Coppolo
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), Charlotte, NCTo Essex County Airport (CDW), Caldwell, 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
- 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 object
- 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 › IFR procedure, not complied with
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 approached the destination airport in night instrument meteorological conditions. The pilot received a clearance for the localizer approach, and radar and global positioning (GPS) data revealed the airplane was established on the localizer course centerline. The airplane crossed the final approach fix 200 feet below the minimum descent altitude (MDA) for the fix, and over the next 1.5 miles, descended on an approximate 7-degree approach angle and a 945 feet-per-minute rate of descent. The airplane continued its descent and struck trees on a ridgeline approximately 400 feet below the intermediate MDA for that segment of the approach. A witness at the crash site saw the airplane through thick fog in a wings-level descent just prior to contact with the trees. She stated that the engine ran smoothly and without interruption. Other witnesses described thick fog along the ridgeline throughout the day prior to the accident, with visibility less than 1/8 mile. Examination of the damaged trees, the crash site, and the airplane revealed signatures consistent with engine power at ground contact. Examination of the wreckage revealed no mechanical anomalies. Post accident flight check results for the localizer approach were "Satisfactory." Further examination of air traffic control (ATC) records revealed that the pilot's first takeoff on the day of the accident was 12 hours prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to comply with the published instrument approach procedure, which resulted in controlled flight into terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07FA056
- Event ID
- 20070123X00088
- Case number
- NYC07FA056
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2007-01-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8dc23f0be6150e1c7ffa28a327cc529773fa8c76c662be8e82e9a77c434a1ed1; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:54:05.616Z.