WPR23LA099 · Beech C23
Beech C23 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Evanston-Uinta County Airport-Burns Field (KEVW) to Joslin Field Magic Valley Regional Airport (TWF)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA099
- 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 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
- N23FD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Evanston-Uinta County Airport-Burns Field (KEVW), Evanston, WYTo Joslin Field Magic Valley Regional Airport (TWF), Twin Falls, ID
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that she encountered unexpected winds while flying at night. After multiple encounters with strong wind gusts and turbulence, the pilot lost control of the airplane and it started to spin downward. She was able to successfully recover from the spin, but was forced to search for a suitable landing site as she was unable to maintain altitude. The pilot executed a forced landing in an open snow-covered area and the airplane stopped abruptly, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inability to maintain altitude following an encounter with turbulence and adverse wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA099
- Event ID
- 20230130106647
- Case number
- WPR23LA099
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2023-01-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1de24f854c86bbe1685d6ef1c4ca1af9fad0e00f05fbf3200ec25a015886c749; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:17:09.804Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. Wrong state; KEVW is Evanston-Uinta County Burns Field at Evanston, Wyoming.