CEN11FA040 · Beech 95-B55 (T42A)
Beech 95-B55 (T42A) · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Clarion Municipal Airport (CAV) to Clarion Municipal Airport (CAV)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11FA040
- 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
- 1 · 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 95-B55 (T42A)
- 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
- N784CB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clarion Municipal Airport (CAV), Clarion, IATo Clarion Municipal Airport (CAV), Clarion, IA
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness reported seeing the airplane suddenly enter a counterclockwise spinning dive toward the ground, make about four revolutions, and then impact the ground. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed significant damage to the cockpit area, including the instrument panel and the area containing the engine controls. The left engine magneto switch was found positioned so that only one magneto of the dual magneto ignition system was active, the left propeller control was in an aft position, and the fuel flow indicator for the left engine showed no fuel flow. The most recent annual inspection of the airplane was performed more than 3 years before the accident; however, no preimpact anomalies were found during the postaccident examinations. Based on the counterclockwise rotation of the airplane, and the position of the engine levers, the pilot failed to maintain control of the airplane following an undetermined anomaly with the left engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane. Contributing to the accident was the loss of left engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11FA040
- Event ID
- 20101026X44534
- Case number
- CEN11FA040
- 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: 0f4f6d10b902e3dcfcf32ba43d187c0e210bfd5b198aeb7fcc6182fad03e8234; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:06:30.539Z.