NYC08FA231 · Beech 95-B55
Beech 95-B55 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Walker County Airport Bevill Field (JFX) to Jack Edwards National Airport (JKA)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08FA231
- 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
- 4 · 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 95-B55
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 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
- N727BC
- Operator
- Bobby R. Crump · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Walker County Airport Bevill Field (JFX), Jasper, ALTo Jack Edwards National Airport (JKA), Gulf Shores, AL
- 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
- Initial climb
- Defining eventThe 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument-rated pilot overloaded his airplane and intentionally departed into an overcast ceiling without filing a flight plan. The radar target identified as the accident airplane diverged from its intended southerly course to an S-shaped northerly track, and climbed and descended between 1,300 feet and 2,600 feet at speeds that varied between 100 knots and 160 knots. The final radar targets depicted a descent and were clustered approximately over the crash site, 1 mile west of the departure airport. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any preimpact mechanical anomalies. According to Federal Aviation Administration Advisory Circular 61-134, one of the leading causes of general aviation accidents is "continued VFR [visual flight rules] flight into IMC [instrument meteorological conditions]... The importance of complete weather information, understanding the significance of the weather information, and being able to correlate the pilot's skills and training, aircraft capabilities, and operating environment with an accurate forecast cannot be emphasized enough... VFR pilots in reduced visual conditions may develop spatial disorientation and lose control..." It was reported that the pilot had operated under VFR in IMC on several occasions prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's intentional visual flight into known instrument meteorological conditions, resulting in spatial disorientation and a subsequent loss of control in flight. Contributing to the accident was the overweight and aft-center-of-gravity condition of the airplane at takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08FA231
- Event ID
- 20080711X01020
- Case number
- NYC08FA231
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: ef21e33a4ab45688e778eb7150175e232aac7fa74a1ff429ecc45024ee4589c0; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:15:03.281Z.