CHI08LA273 · Beech C23
The Flight Center Beech C23 · Accident: hard landing
From Chicago Executive Airport (PWK) to Chicago Executive Airport (PWK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08LA273
- 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
- 0 · 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 C23
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 23
- 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
- N6664N
- Operator
- The Flight Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago Executive Airport (PWK), Wheeling, ILTo Chicago Executive Airport (PWK), Wheeling, IL
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 hard landing during a student pilot instructional flight. The student pilot had performed two landings at the accident airport before attempting a third landing. During the third landing attempt, the airplane had a high descent rate while on final approach. The flight instructor stated that he repeatedly told the student to check the vertical speed indicator while the airplane was between final and short final. The student pilot said that before the airplane landed, the flight instructor did not say anything when engine power was reduced to idle, which resulted in the airplane slowing too much and dropping.
Probable cause
The inadequate flare by the student pilot and the inadequate supervision and delayed go-around performed by the flight instructor. Contributing to the accident were the student pilot's failure to attain/maintain a stabilized approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08LA273
- Event ID
- 20081003X41452
- Case number
- CHI08LA273
- 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: 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 2008-08-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fe6fdbade7dbfd8a2e7c7fa2c34eb04a235b008a2c8774cc7cd6c4937af0ab6c; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:19:32.229Z.