CEN18FA108 · Beech 58 UNDESIGNAT
Beech 58 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Ulysses Airport (ULS) to Scott City Municipal Airport (TQK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18FA108
- 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
- 2 · 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
- N678DD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ulysses Airport (ULS), Ulysses, KSTo Scott City Municipal Airport (TQK), Scott City, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 48 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
- En route · climb to 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument-rated private pilot and one passenger departed on a personal flight in the pilot's multi-engine airplane in night visual meteorological conditions. A witness saw the lights of the accident airplane about 2 minutes after it departed. Within several seconds, the lights "fell quickly like a shooting star," followed by an orange flash of fire as the airplane impacted terrain. There was no radar or radio communications information associated with the airplane.
The wreckage was severely fragmented, and the evidence at the accident site was consistent with a high-energy impact in a left-wing-low, nose-down attitude. Examination revealed no evidence of any pre-impact mechanical deficiencies with the airplane or engines. Autopsy and toxicology testing of the pilot revealed no evidence of physiological impairment or incapacitation.
Probable cause
An inflight loss of control and collision with terrain for reasons that could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18FA108
- Event ID
- 20180223X04505
- Case number
- CEN18FA108
- 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 2018-02-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 45ff9770543504385a3ecdae86368338270e33002c2468b1a2187013e294ccf8; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:34:47.730Z.