CEN16LA206 · Beech A23-24
Beech A23-24 · Accident: hard landing
From Perry County Municipal Airport (TEL) to Clintonville Municipal Airport (CLI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA206
- 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 A23-24
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 23
- 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
- N5771V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Perry County Municipal Airport (TEL), Tell, INTo Clintonville Municipal Airport (CLI), Clintonville, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1966)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was completing a cross-country flight from Florida to Wisconsin. He stated that he got a full night's sleep prior to departing on the flight around 1100. About 0330, he was approaching the airport for the third and final fuel stop of the trip. Although the surface observation at the airport indicated that night visual meteorological conditions prevailed, the pilot noticed that, as he approached the airport, the runway and precision approach path indicator (PAPI) lights were partially obscured by ground fog. About 250 ft above ground level on final approach, the PAPI lights indicated that the airplane was below the approach path, and the pilot attempted to correct by applying engine power. He reported that the landing felt normal, then the nose landing gear "gave out," and the airplane skidded about 300 ft down the runway before coming to rest.
Examination of the runway surface revealed tire skid marks consistent with the airplane touching down about 40 ft right of the runway centerline at the beginning of the paved surface. The airplane's left horizontal stabilizer displayed an indentation and paint transfer consistent with impact with a runway threshold light. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no preexisting anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. It is possible that the pilot may have lost visual contact with the airport environment due to ground fog as the airplane neared the runway, which resulted in the short and right-of-centerline landing. Although the pilot stated that he did not feel tired during the accident flight, it is likely that he was experiencing symptoms of fatigue as a result of his extended time awake prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain the proper glidepath during the night visual approach, which resulted in impact with a runway threshold light, and his improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA206
- Event ID
- 20160606X90906
- Case number
- CEN16LA206
- 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, coordinates. 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: 3c8c894e9586a1d3df6c9265f9dbe9fd9affb6473255cb714209ffdf144f3c33; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:28:10.708Z.