CEN11FA285 · Hawker-Beechcraft E-55
Rose Resources Oil & Gas Hawker-Beechcraft E-55 · Accident: loss of control in flight during an emergency descent
From De Queen, AR to Tulsa, OK
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11FA285
- 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
Hawker-Beechcraft E-55
- Aircraft type
- Hawker Beechcraft E-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
- N3959W
- Operator
- Rose Resources Oil & Gas
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From De Queen, ARTo Tulsa, OK
- 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was on a cross-country flight and had spent a night at an en route airport to allow thunderstorms to move past his route of flight. After the storms and rain passed, the pilot continued on his flight the next morning. Witnesses reported that the airplane departed at a steep angle from the runway and that the engines sounded like they were cutting out. One witness added that, when the airplane was an estimated 300 to 500 feet in the air, it looked like the airplane was trying to make a 180-degree turn back to the runway when it appeared to enter an aerodynamic stall and spin to the ground.
A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the landing gear and flaps were retracted. The airplane’s wing fuel tanks were breached; however, the wing top skin panels displayed hydraulic deformation consistent with a quantity of fuel being present in the fuel tanks at the time of impact. Further examination of the engines did not reveal any anomalies that would have prevented the engines from producing rated power. The examination of the airframe confirmed that the flight control lock was not installed in the pilot’s control column. Additionally, damage and marks found on the front baggage door and cabin nose area were consistent with the door being closed at the time of the accident. Flight control continuity was established. No preimpact abnormalities were found and a reason for the loss of control could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control during takeoff for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11FA285
- Event ID
- 20110415X10912
- Case number
- CEN11FA285
- 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, 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: 587d8ded6c31a9e4a7b5ba06d1057b4313dd1d1c3015d33426e1c87db9f971bd; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:19:58.264Z.