CEN21LA208 · Beech 23
Beech 23 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA208
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- 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
- N2378Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1962)
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 pilot stated that during takeoff on the 4,012-ft-long runway, the airplane seemed to accelerate slowly and use a greater amount of runway than normal. After liftoff, the airplane would not accelerate and climbed very slowly. The pilot turned the airplane toward the right, and it began to lose altitude. The airspeed decreased, and the airplane stalled about 20 to 30 ft above the ground. The airplane then impacted the ground.
Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Takeoff performance data from the airplane’s flight manual showed that the airplane should have been about 50 ft above the ground when it was 2,281 ft down the runway. Given the length of the runway, the pilot had the opportunity to safely abort the takeoff when he realized that the airplane was not accelerating normally and not achieving its expected takeoff performance. However, the pilot continued the takeoff and likely raised the nose of the airplane to a high pitch and high drag attitude in an attempt to gain altitude. The high pitch attitude placed the airplane close to the critical angle of attack, and when the airplane entered a turn, it experienced an aerodynamic stall and descended to ground impact.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to abort the takeoff and his high pitch attitude after takeoff, which resulted in an exceedance of the critical angle of attack and a subsequent aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA208
- Event ID
- 20210504103030
- Case number
- CEN21LA208
- 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, cause areas. 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: 8da0ad8786acd86fffb2a9f22636128d3e9e843d0c736e881afd32134a78414e; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:00:44.593Z.