CEN09CA213 · Beech 58
San Juan Pilot Training Beech 58 · Accident: hard landing
From Durango La Plata County Airport (DRO) to Durango La Plata County Airport (DRO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA213
- 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 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
- N8245H
- Operator
- San Juan Pilot Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Durango La Plata County Airport (DRO), Durango, COTo Durango La Plata County Airport (DRO), Durango, CO
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff in the twin-engine airplane, the flight instructor announced a simulated engine failure and expected the student pilot to land on the remaining runway. The student pilot responded by reducing both engines to idle power, but did not pitch the airplane's nose down enough to maintain sufficient airspeed. The flight instructor responded by lowering the airplane's nose to the proper attitude before releasing the controls. Moments later the flight instructor realized that the student pilot was not arresting the rate of descent and was unable to react in time to prevent a hard landing. The airplane's fuselage and right wing sustained structural damage during the accident.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper landing flare and the flight instructor's delayed remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA213
- Event ID
- 20090316X41503
- Case number
- CEN09CA213
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-03-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5e802633c74dd712451d6aa6c04224036e420b6a463954d69c1ece1c8915bbb0; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:50:28.770Z.