GAA18CA406 · Beech 76
Air Con Beech 76 · Accident: landing area undershoot
From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE) to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA406
- 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 76
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 76
- 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
- N66340
- Operator
- Air Con
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FLTo Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1979)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that he asked the pilot receiving instruction to simulate a power-off emergency landing with a 180º turn to the runway and directed her to "lower the gear when landing was assured." After initiating the power-off approach, the pilot receiving instruction turned the airplane from the downwind leg onto the base leg of the traffic pattern and extended the landing gear. The sink rate increased, and she attempted to correct with full engine power, but the airplane continued to descend. The airplane landed short of the runway and struck a ground lighting system. The pilot receiving instruction then initiated a go-around and landed without further incident.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing.
The instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The airport’s automated weather observation station reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 080° at 8 knots. The airplane landed on runway 09.
Probable cause
The pilot receiving instruction's failure to maintain a proper approach path and her delayed go-around during a simulated emergency landing, which resulted in landing short of the runway. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor's failure to properly monitor the student's approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA406
- Event ID
- 20180709X81705
- Case number
- GAA18CA406
- 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. 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: ee9448063157095dccf9505329c052d5b0cd6ae84a0de469289f03259c20eb26; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:48:06.888Z.