ERA18FA046 · Beech 58 UNDESIGNAT
Beech 58 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Henry E. Rohlsen Airport (STX) to Cyril E. King Airport (TIST)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18FA046
- 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
- 5 · 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 58 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 58
- 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
- N4494A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Henry E. Rohlsen Airport (STX), St. CroixTo Cyril E. King Airport (TIST), St. Thomas
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1970)
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before departing on the night cross-country flight in the multi-engine airplane with four passengers, the private pilot, who did not hold a multi-engine rating, called a flight instructor/mechanic, because he was having problems starting the left engine. The flight instructor/mechanic advised the pilot to wait until the next day; however, the pilot chose to depart. Shortly after takeoff, the pilot advised air traffic control that the engines were "not running right" and that he needed to return to the airport. The airplane was cleared to land, but impacted terrain about 500 ft short of the runway threshold and was destroyed by impact forces and a postcrash fire. The disposition of the wreckage suggested a steep descent and impact attitude with little horizontal motion, consistent with a loss of control.
Examination of the left engine found that the No. 2 cylinder piston exhibited severe detonation damage, which likely resulted in the subsequent catastrophic failure of the left engine; however, the reason for the detonation could not be determined. While the pilot lacked a multiengine rating, the investigation was unable to determine his prior multiengine flight experience.
Probable cause
The non-multiengine rated pilot's failure to maintain airplane control during a single-engine approach. Contributing to the accident was a total loss of engine power on the left engine due to detonation 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 ERA18FA046
- Event ID
- 20171207X11110
- Case number
- ERA18FA046
- 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 2017-12-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 76f3ac25eb1c487ca109421318c190f401f998e85f15e872282bd0e6bbd0111a; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:26:31.579Z.