ERA12FA062 · Beech D-45
Beech D-45 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Wings Field (96FL) to Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12FA062
- 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
- 2 · 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 D-45
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft D-45
- 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
- N34KT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wings Field (96FL), Williston, FLTo Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6), Daytona Beach, FL
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses observed the airplane take off on a turf runway surrounded by trees. The airplane appeared to perform an exaggerated soft-field takeoff and became airborne within a couple of hundred feet. It then ballooned up and started to settle but then leveled off just above the runway and accelerated. When the airplane passed abeam friends of the flight instructor who were near the runway, they reported observing a few puffs of smoke emanating from the airplane's smoke system and the airplane's wings wagging up and down. When the airplane reached the end of the runway, witnesses saw it pitch up abruptly to a steep nose-up attitude and climb to about 200 feet above ground level. It then yawed and rolled left while pitching nose down. Witnesses observed the nose of the airplane oscillate up and down before the airplane descended rapidly and impacted a tree and terrain.
Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of any preimpact malfunctions of the airplane or engine. However, examination of the tungsten filaments from the light bulbs in the stall warning indicator lights revealed that they were stretched and distorted, indicating they were likely illuminated during impact.
The flight instructor was described as knowing airplane energy management very well; however, on the day of the accident, he may have been surprised after he cleared the top of the trees surrounding the airport, where he went from a little, or no wind condition, to a condition where the airplane would have suddenly been subjected to a 30 degree crosswind and wind gusting from 10 to 16 knots. This would have affected the airplane's flight path and resulted in a loss of energy, possibly resulting in the loss of control and stall.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain airspeed in changing wind conditions during a steep climb after takeoff, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor’s ostentatious display close to the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12FA062
- Event ID
- 20111107X85529
- Case number
- ERA12FA062
- 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: d03d2c331a2e83ef7efa0408ca9067e6604d2da293fd3c64b5300242f61fd63b; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:57:44.953Z.