CEN12FA421 · Beech E90
Win Win Aviation Beech E90 · Accident: windshear or thunderstorm while maneuvering
From DeKalb Taylor Municipal Airport (DKB) to Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport (BRO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12FA421
- 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 E90
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 90
- 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
- N987GM
- Operator
- Win Win Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DeKalb Taylor Municipal Airport (DKB), De Kalb, ILTo Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport (BRO), Brownsville, TX
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Windshear or thunderstorm
- 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 structures
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before the flight, the pilot did not obtain a weather briefing and departed without approval from company personnel. The airplane departed the airport about 0230 and climbed to 14,500 feet mean sea level. The pilot obtained visual flight rules (VFR) flight following services from air traffic control (ATC) personnel during the flight. While the airplane was en route, ATC personnel advised the pilot that an area of moderate precipitation was located about 15 miles ahead along the airplane's flight path. The pilot acknowledged the transmission and was then directed to contact another controller. About 3 minutes later, the new controller advised the pilot of an area of moderate to extreme precipitation about 2 miles ahead of the airplane. The pilot responded that he could see the weather and asked the controller for a recommendation for a reroute. The controller indicated he didn't have a recommendation, but finished by saying a turn to the west (a right turn) away from the weather would probably be better. The pilot responded that he would make a right turn. There was no further radio contact with the pilot. Flight track data indicated the airplane was in a right turn when radar contact was lost. A review of the radar data, available weather information, and airplane wreckage indicated the airplane flew through a heavy to extreme weather radar echo containing a thunderstorm and subsequently broke up in flight. Postaccident examination revealed no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airframe and engines that would have precluded normal operation.
During the VFR flight, the pilot was responsible for remaining in VFR conditions and staying clear of clouds. However, Federal Aviation Administration directives instruct ATC personnel to issue pertinent weather information to pilots, provide guidance to pilots to avoid weather (when requested), and plan ahead and be prepared to suggest alternate routes or altitudes when there are areas of significant weather. The weather advisories and warnings issued to the pilot by ATC were not in compliance with these directives. The delay in providing information to the pilot about the heavy and extreme weather made avoiding the thunderstorm more difficult and contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent flight into thunderstorm activity, which resulted in the loss of airplane control and the subsequent exceedance of the airplane's design limits and in-flight breakup. Contributing to the accident was the failure of air traffic control personnel to use available radar information to provide the pilot with a timely warning that he was about to encounter extreme precipitation and weather along his route of flight or to provide alternative routing to the pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12FA421
- Event ID
- 20120707X20106
- Case number
- CEN12FA421
- 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: 5650ad95dc8efd3d2b89be1692c8d4bc65c4c61e2b5e7173e31e7eeabe9e83e6; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:28:23.126Z.