WPR16FA182 · Beech 95 B55 (T42A) A
Beech 95 B55 (T42A) A · Accident en route
From Billings Logan International Airport (BIL) to Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16FA182
- 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
- 3 · 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 95 B55 (T42A) A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 95
- 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
- N413D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Billings Logan International Airport (BIL), Billings, MTTo Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), Rapid City, SD
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1974)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot and his passengers departed on a personal cross-country flight and flew southeast toward their destination. Radar tracking indicated that after departure, the airplane attained an altitude of about 5,600 ft mean sea level (msl) in about 13 minutes. Radar data became intermittent; however, when radar contact was reestablished several minutes later, the airplane tracking was consistent with the course and altitude of the flight. The last data tracks identified the airplane at 5,800 ft msl.
The wreckage was located on flat open land at an elevation of 3,751 ft about 58 miles southeast from the last radar return. There were no witnesses to the accident, and no significant weather was in the area at the time of the accident.
Ground signatures and an examination of the airframe revealed evidence that the airplane collided with the ground in a nose-low near vertical attitude. Damage signatures and a teardown examination revealed that the propeller damage for both the left and right-side propeller assemblies was similar with the physical damage indicating rotation with power on at the time of impact.
Postaccident examinations of the airframe, engine, and propellers revealed no discrepancies that would have precluded normal operation.
The reason for the departure from cruise flight and the loss of control could not be determined from the available evidence.
Probable cause
The airplane's departure from cruise flight for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16FA182
- Event ID
- 20160917X84927
- Case number
- WPR16FA182
- 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: 1b2e85c42f843cdb55255064e41b6fb0c02bb188152d66612eab9ff45c4cd682; retrieved 2026-09-14T22:00:24.429Z.