Pontiac Flight Service Beech B200 accident
Beech B200 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) en route
From Oakland County International Airport (PTK) to Waukegan National Airport (UGN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11CA387
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech B200
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 200
- 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
- N23WS
- Operator
- Pontiac Flight Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MITo Waukegan National Airport (UGN), Waukegan, 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot began a descent from 16,000 feet and was being vectored for an approach when the airplane was struck by lightning. The airplane continued to perform normally and an uneventful landing was made at the planned destination airport. The pilot noticed the airplane was damaged during a post-flight walk-around. The lightning strike caused minor damage to a propeller blade on the left engine and to the left wing flap. The right elevator was substantially damaged by the lightning strike. The pilot stated they had passed an area of convective activity and were in instrument meteorological conditions with smooth air at the time of the lightning strike.
Probable cause
The lightning strike during an en route descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11CA387
- Event ID
- 20110614X25647
- Case number
- CEN11CA387
- 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: 976c9a75a77b1b60302554182fb4568a77030d24cdf53e1ebcfe7646cb2b6e0b; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:17:08.392Z.