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CEN11CA362 · Beech B24R

11 May 2011 · Dowagiac, MI, United States

Beech B24R · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach

From Southwest Michigan Regional Airport (BEH) to Southwest Michigan Regional Airport (BEH)

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Event

NTSB case
CEN11CA362
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 B24R

Aircraft type
Beechcraft 24
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
N9321S
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Southwest Michigan Regional Airport (BEH), Benton Harbor, MITo Southwest Michigan Regional Airport (BEH), Benton Harbor, MI
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
Approach · VFR pattern final
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
Aerodynamic stall/spin
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

While demonstrating a power-off spot landing to a student, the certified flight instructor (CFI) recognized that the airplane would not make it to the 1,000 foot runway markings he was aiming for, but felt that he would make it to the runway. He allowed the airplane to get too low on the approach at too slow an airspeed. When the airplane was about 30 feet from the runway end at 10 feet above the ground, he began to add engine power, but the airplane stalled and impacted the ground. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and left landing gear. The CFI reported no mechanical failures or malfunctions.

Probable cause

The flight instructor's failure to maintain an appropriate glide path and airspeed during the landing approach, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN11CA362
Event ID
20110601X22939
Case number
CEN11CA362
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: a169fb01134604c82df8bcab66c8ba91a0d5cc247fd6c01f1b60b43cb6aa50f0; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:13:55.042Z.