GAA15CA295 · Beech V35B
Beech V35B · Accident: runway excursion during takeoff
From West Houston Airport (IWS) to David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA295
- 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 V35B
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N800JT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From West Houston Airport (IWS), Houston, TXTo David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH), Houston, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1971)
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that this was his first solo flight in this airplane. During the takeoff roll, the pilot reported that the main cabin door "popped open" around 60 knots. Believing he had sufficient runway remaining to stop, he reduced power to idle and applied "maximum braking." Subsequently, the airplane overran the runway surface and came to rest in a creek about 72 feet past the end of the runway. The pilot reported that the braking action available was "insufficient" to stop within the remaining runway distance.
During a postaccident examination, a Federal Aviation Administration Aviation Safety Inspector performed an inspection and functional check of the brakes and no anomalies were found. Additionally, the inspector found skid marks that were 501 feet in length before the end of the runway. The left and right wing both sustained substantial damage.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly secure the cabin door prior to takeoff, resulting in the door opening during takeoff, an aborted takeoff, runway overrun, and collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA295
- Event ID
- 20151007X44823
- Case number
- GAA15CA295
- 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: 4b3c6db36086af12888b821ff1c3e0d977185cb8492838c1fc701f218ed1bf81; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:52:06.455Z.