GAA18CA254 · Beech 58 P
B2 Aviation Beech 58 P · Accident: landing area undershoot
From Napa County Airport (APC) to Sisters Eagle Air Airport (6K5)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA254
- 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 58 P
- 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
- N222BD
- Operator
- B2 Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Napa County Airport (APC), Napa, CATo Sisters Eagle Air Airport (6K5), Sisters, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1982)
- 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
- Landing area undershoot
- 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 pilot performed a steep approach over tree-covered descending terrain to the tree-lined runway. He reported that, on the approach, the airplane "encountered significant low-level wind shear and sink" about 800 ft before the runway. He aborted the landing, but the airplane impacted the ground 150 ft short of the runway.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to both engine mounts and the right-wing spar.
The AWOS located on the airport reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 250° at 13 knots, gusting to 22 knots. The density altitude was reported as 4,000 ft, and the pilot landed on runway 20, which was 3,560 ft long.
The airport facility directory stated that runway 20 has a nonstandard entry due to rising terrain at the approach end, along with 81-ft-tall trees that were 560 ft from the approach end of the runway.
In the recommendation section of the National Transportation Safety Board Pilot Aircraft Accident Report, the pilot reported that the accident could have been prevented by avoiding nonstandard or steep approaches to runway 20 in gusting wind conditions.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain sufficient altitude during approach in gusting crosswind conditions, which resulted in an attempted rejected landing and a runway undershoot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA254
- Event ID
- 20180504X25824
- Case number
- GAA18CA254
- 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 2018-05-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ec57afb4b9f9fdd94ca9e990857f6430a900816c1fbbcec62db4d8376b932a8c; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:01:03.048Z.