NYC07FA119 · Beech BE-A55
Beech BE-A55 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Oshawa Executive Airport (CYOO) to Wilmington Airport (KILG)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07FA119
- 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
- 3 · 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 BE-A55
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-A55
- 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
- C-FDJP
- Operator
- Maxwell B. Hudson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oshawa Executive Airport (CYOO), OshawaTo Wilmington Airport (KILG), Wilmington, DE
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Eng assembly, crankshaft counterweights/vib damper › Failure
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, 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 airplane experienced a left engine failure while en route to its destination and diverted to another airport. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident, and the airplane was observed exiting the clouds in level flight, about one-half to three-quarters beyond the approach end of the intended landing runway. The pilot attempted a missed approach and the airplane made a climbing left turn, and entered clouds. Shortly thereafter, the airplane was observed descending toward the ground in a flat spin. The airplane impacted in a wooded area about 1/2-mile south-southwest of the approach end of the runway. Examination of the left engine revealed the propeller was at or near the feathered position. An approximate 5.5-inch hole was observed in the crankcase, above the number 1 cylinder, which was attributed to the separation of the aft-top counterweight assembly. No other mechanical failures were observed. This was the airplane's first flight after an annual inspection. The engines had been operating for approximately 308 hours since they were disassembled and inspected after the airplane sustained a gear-up landing. At that time, the work performed on the left engine included the installation of new snap rings on the counterweight assemblies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during a single-engine missed approach, after the failure of the airplane's left engine aft-top counterweight assembly. Contributing to the accident were instrument meteorological conditions due to clouds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07FA119
- Event ID
- 20070531X00671
- Case number
- NYC07FA119
- 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: 694590ccc6f5b6e5af7eea1dbecce7049641decf59298521d46acc9f6b66f0c4; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:37:32.260Z.