ATL07FA077 · Beech 58
Beech 58 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Jack Edwards National Airport (KJKA) to Griffin Spalding County Airport (6A2)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07FA077
- 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
- 5 · 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 58
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 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
- N5647C
- Operator
- Jesse R. Champion · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jack Edwards National Airport (KJKA), Gulf Shores, ALTo Griffin Spalding County Airport (6A2), Griffin, GA
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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 › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident pilot had recently returned from an airshow, and had shared with his pilot associates that he thought he could roll his personal airplane. He had previously attempted to roll the airplane, but a pilot-rated passenger stopped the accident pilot from completing the aerobatic roll. On the accident flight, a ground witness, who is also a pilot, heard the accident airplane, and thought it sounded like the pilot was doing aerobatic maneuvers. He heard the engine noise continue to increase, and saw the airplane descending very fast, in a 45 to 60 degree nose down attitude. The witness then saw a portion of the airplane break away prior to impact. Postaccident inspection of the airplane by the NTSB investigator-in-charge and the NTSB Materials Laboratory, disclosed evidence of pilot-induced overload failures of the tail and wings. The accident pilot's airplane was not designed or approved for aerobatic flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceeding the design stress limits of the airplane while performing aerobatics in a nonaerobatic airplane, which resulted in an in-flight overload failure of the airframe. A factor in the accident was the pilot's decision to perform aerobatics.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07FA077
- Event ID
- 20070427X00463
- Case number
- ATL07FA077
- 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: d43ff851d3532029d2d983f5cac18ce353692c56eb4acbe38e3cec67cfeb3ed7; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:42:58.441Z.