ERA20CA072 · Beech 23 C23
Beech 23 C23 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK) to Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20CA072
- 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 23 C23
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 23
- 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
- N24690
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK), Norfolk, VATo Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK), Norfolk, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1973)
- 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 · IFR final 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- 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 was providing instruction to the private pilot who had recently purchased a share in the airplane. They had been practicing landings and had felt wind gusts on the previous landings. Just before the airplane touched down for the fifth practice landing, a wind gust lifted the left wing, and the airplane was pushed right. The pilot attempted to correct for the gust, but the airplane bounced on all three landing gear and became airborne. The instructor told the pilot to add power and go around. Another wind gust pushed the airplane further right, and the airplane was now "clearly in a loss of control state." The instructor took the controls, but the airplane was already in a full stall with full power and full flaps extended. The airplane impacted ground adjacent to the runway.
The pilot stated that, when the airplane touched down, a wind gust pushed the airplane right. The instructor yelled for full power and said, "my airplane." The wind pushed the airplane further right and the airplane impacted a ditch and spun around on the propeller. The left-wing spar fitting sustained substantial damage. The underside of the fuselage aft of the firewall, the propeller, and the nosewheel were also damaged. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot receiving instruction's failure to maintain airplane control during landing with a crosswind, which resulted in a bounced landing, and the flight instructor's delayed remedial action, which resulted in a loss of control during the go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20CA072
- Event ID
- 20200109X13705
- Case number
- ERA20CA072
- 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: 1b6db17a3c2c8667380b9d668ce4e62edb40d8d5da64b7425a2b5b76530119d1; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:54:23.118Z.