WPR19LA171 · Beech 35 Undesignat
Beech 35 Undesignat · Accident: aircraft structural failure during initial climb
From Deer Park Airport (DEW) to Deer Park Airport (DEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA171
- 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 35 Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N2839V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Deer Park Airport (DEW), Deer Park, WATo Deer Park Airport (DEW), Deer Park, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 72 years (built 1947)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- 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 structures
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was practicing touch-and-go takeoffs and landings when, shortly after departure while climbing through about 400 ft above ground level in a right turn, he heard a loud bang and felt a vibration. The vibration ceased, and the pilot continued to his intended destination with no other anomalies noted. Substantial damage to the aft right fuselage was discovered during postflight inspection. Examination of the aft fuselage revealed that the fuselage skin exhibited diagonal buckling, several stringers were bent or deformed, and several bulkheads were damaged. Opposing diagonal buckles or skin fractures in an “X” pattern were noted at several locations on the fuselage skin, coincident with a stringer or bulkhead location. No obvious damage was noted to the left side of the fuselage. The damage to the airplane was consistent with an empennage flutter event; however, in the absence of additional information, the cause of the flutter event could not be determined.
Probable cause
An empennage flutter event 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 WPR19LA171
- Event ID
- 20190614X23348
- Case number
- WPR19LA171
- 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: 4896d95f50228c54f5dc81f12eb67d05b3dddf4c44ef9c31b6b920578428750d; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:16:33.697Z.