CEN17LA282 · Beech G35
Beech G35 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Grand Prairie Municipal Airport (GPM) to Wichita Valley Airport (F14)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA282
- 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 G35
- 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
- N4216D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Prairie Municipal Airport (GPM), Grand Prairie, TXTo Wichita Valley Airport (F14), Wichita Falls, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1956)
- 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
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot stated that the cross-country personal flight proceeded normally until he entered the downwind leg for landing. During the landing approach in dark night conditions, he noted scattered thunderstorms ahead. During the final approach, he thought the airplane was too high, and he considered conducting a go-around. The airplane encountered a strong downdraft, heavy rain, and turbulence, and the pilot saw several lightning strikes ahead. The pilot decided to land and risk overrunning the runway rather than possibly entering the thunderstorm. Upon landing, the airplane overran the end of the runway, the second half of which had standing water on it, and then struck a berm.
An automated weather observation facility 7 miles east of the accident site reported, at the time of the accident, variable winds from between 060° and 360° at between 16 and 20 knots, gusting to between 21 and 29 knots with a peak wind of 35 knots. A thunderstorm was present near the airport with lightning observed in all quadrants.
Probable cause
The flight's encounter with adverse weather conditions at night, which resulted in the pilot's loss of airplane control upon landing due to standing water and a subsequent runway overrun.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA282
- Event ID
- 20170724X61747
- Case number
- CEN17LA282
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-07-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1dbda920da49a04171e9fc3f3a4f3352eda375cfbffd3c318d1ec33525e08d9d; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:35:47.408Z.