ERA12LA549 · Beech 76
Beech 76 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Princeton Airport (39N) to Central Jersey Regional Airport (47N)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA549
- 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 76
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 76
- 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
- N6716L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Princeton Airport (39N), Princeton, NJTo Central Jersey Regional Airport (47N), Manville, NJ
- 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 go-around
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, after a normal approach, the airplane drifted to the left after touchdown and he commenced a go-around. As he began the go-around, the pilot-rated passenger called out for “full power.” The airplane turned and rolled sharply to the right. The pilot corrected with flight control inputs, and the airplane banked to the left; the left wing tip struck a dirt mound located off the left side of the runway. The airplane then collided with a perimeter fence and came to rest inverted. The pilot-rated passenger reported that the airplane departed the left side of the runway during the landing and subsequently “porpoised.”
Although preliminary on-site examination of the wreckage indicated that the right engine “did not appear to be operating” and that the right engine mixture control was in the idle cutoff position, a witness, who was a flight instructor, stated that he observed no indications of an engine failure while the airplane was airborne. Subsequent examination of both engines revealed no evidence of a mechanical malfunction or failure, and both propeller assemblies showed evidence of rotation at impact.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during the landing and attempted go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA549
- Event ID
- 20120906X93725
- Case number
- ERA12LA549
- 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: 252bab7b558e08792cb18a83001f2c8d32fe3901a92f993747a6afe8d2cafbcc; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:44:58.474Z.