GAA17CA500 · Beech C23
Beech C23 · Accident: runway excursion during takeoff
From Rexburg Madison County Airport (RXE) to U42 · Salt Lake City, UT
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA500
- 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 C23
- 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
- N6576R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rexburg Madison County Airport (RXE), Rexburg, IDTo U42 · Salt Lake City, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 43 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, during the takeoff roll, about 2,100 ft down the 4,210-ft-long runway, the airplane had accelerated to 65 knots. The airplane remained in ground effect for about 1,000 more feet but would not climb. The pilot feared the airplane would collide with obstacles beyond the end of the runway, and he aborted the takeoff.
During landing, the airplane bounced, and when it descended back to the runway, the pilot immediately applied the brakes. The airplane exited the left side of the runway before reaching the runway threshold. The airplane continued about 120 ft and then collided with a fence.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings and the lower left fuselage.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The METAR at the accident airport reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 200° at 8 knots, and the temperature was 73°F. The field elevation was 4,862 ft, and the density altitude was 6,682 ft.
According to the Pilot's Operating Handbook, under the reported weather conditions, the minimum ground roll was about 2,249 ft, and the minimum distance to clear a 50-ft obstacle was about 3,701 ft. Further, the normal distance to land would have been about 901 ft.
According to FAA-H-8083-25A, The Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, Chapter 10 (Aircraft Performance) pg.16:
The most critical conditions of landing performance are combinations of high gross weight, high density altitude, and unfavorable wind. These conditions produce the greatest required landing distances and critical levels of energy dissipation required of the brakes. In all cases, it is necessary to make an accurate prediction of minimum landing distance to compare with the available runway. A polished, professional landing procedure is necessary because the landing phase of flight accounts for more pilot-caused aircraft accidents than any other single phase of flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's delayed decision to land the airplane with insufficient runway remaining after realizing the airplane wasn't climbing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA500
- Event ID
- 20170821X02536
- Case number
- GAA17CA500
- 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: fa8c136fa1158c1cadc49bedf8682b74e3c3d6e910441bd1cc5a33e3c9eb08ae; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:43:32.503Z.