CEN15LA280 · Beech G58
Beech G58 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Decatur Airport (DEC) to Taylorville Municipal Airport (TAZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA280
- 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 G58
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 58
- 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
- N669CS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Decatur Airport (DEC), Decatur, ILTo Taylorville Municipal Airport (TAZ), Taylorville, IL
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2015)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot receiving instruction and the flight instructor were conducting an instructional flight to help prepare the pilot for the multiengine practical examination. The pilot stated that, while returning to the base airport and about 7,500 ft above ground level (agl), the instructor reduced power on the left engine to simulate a single engine-out emergency. The student then identified, verified, and feathered the left engine propeller.
About 7,000 ft agl, the instructor advised the pilot that they were going to conduct a simulated dual engine-out emergency and reduced the right engine power to idle. About 3 miles from the airport, the instructor advised that he was going to restart the feathered left engine, and the left propeller began turning, which led him to believe the engine was operating; however, he did not verify that the engine was operating. The instructor advised the pilot to conduct a straight-in approach and target 1,000 ft down the runway. As the airplane neared the airport with full flaps and the landing gear lowered for landing, the instructor realized that it was lined up with a taxiway. The instructor pushed the throttles forward, took the control yoke, and instructed the pilot to "get the wheels up for a go-around." Subsequently, the airplane entered a steep left turn and then impacted a cornfield adjacent to the airport. The instructor's inadequate monitoring of the approach led to his failure to see that the airplane was lined up with a taxiway instead of a runway, which necessitated the go-around.
Data downloaded from the airplane's onboard avionics showed that, about 4.5 minutes before the accident, the left engine fuel flow and rpm decreased to zero, consistent with the engine being shut down and feathered. The rpm and fuel flow remained at zero for about 4 minutes and then began to increase. Subsequently, the fuel flow began to drop below minimum fuel flow levels again, and the rpm remained about 2,000 and decreased as the airspeed decreased, which is indicative of the instructor's failure to restart the engine. It is likely that the instructor saw the propeller windmilling and assumed it was rotating under power.
The Federal Aviation Administration noted in a General Aviation Joint Steering Committee Safety Enhancement Topic bulletin that "single-engine go-arounds in light twin [airplanes] often don't go well and they should be avoided if possible." Because the instructor did not recognize that the airplane only had one engine operating, there was insufficient power for a go-around, which resulted in the instructor's subsequent loss of airplane control.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s failure to verify that the left engine was operational, which resulted in insufficient engine power being available during an attempted go-around and his subsequent loss of airplane control. Contributing to the accident was the instructor's inadequate monitoring of the approach, which led to his failure to notice that the airplane was lined up with a taxiway and necessitated the go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA280
- Event ID
- 20150624X35258
- Case number
- CEN15LA280
- 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: 1527b8ac97c7e0e878a5149f7a086e0ae432363140426008d37ab85b67c448b5; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:27:15.309Z.