ERA16FA044 · Beech F33A
Beech F33A · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB) to Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16FA044
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech F33A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 33
- 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
- N9318Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB), Parkersburg, WVTo Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR), Danbury, CT
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At the conclusion of a cross-country flight, the instrument-rated pilot was cleared for an instrument approach in actual instrument meteorological conditions. About 2 minutes later, the airplane entered a right descending turn away from the airport. The controller attempted to contact the pilot but received no response. The airplane impacted a reservoir about 8 miles from the airport.
Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. On his most recent application for a medical certificate about 6 months before the accident, the pilot reported a total of 1,940 hours of flight experience, but his logbooks were not recovered, so his recent flight experience and instrument currency could not be determined. The pilot's toxicology results were negative, and the autopsy was inconclusive, so it is unknown if the pilot experienced a medical condition that could have contributed to the loss of airplane control.
Probable cause
A loss of airplane control for reasons that could not be determined because examination of the wreckage revealed no mechanical deficiencies.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16FA044
- Event ID
- 20151120X34159
- Case number
- ERA16FA044
- 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: 82156deeae0cb06925e75e8d72e968af72ccc02342ee06781e2d40dacf25980b; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:34:35.814Z.