CEN23FA257 · Avid MAGNUM
Avid MAGNUM · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) while maneuvering
From Beaver Island Airport (SJX) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23FA257
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Avid MAGNUM
- Aircraft type
- Avid MAGNUM
- 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
- N103DG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Beaver Island Airport (SJX), Beaver Island, MITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 24 years (built 1999)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a local personal sightseeing flight, the pilot was maneuvering the airplane to see a lighthouse on a remote island. Although he reported that he had good visibility and that the water was flat, the airplane inadvertently impacted the surface of the lake. The pilot regained consciousness in the water but had no recollection of the accident. The airplane was submerged in 20 ft of water. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that both wings, the floats, and the lower fuselage exhibited significant aft crush damage consistent with a nose low, left-wing low impact with the water. An examination of the engine and airframe revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operations. According to a surface observation about 6 miles southeast of the accident site, visual meteorological conditions prevailed. Satellite imagery for the accident site indicated cloud cover and lower visibility over most of the lake due to wildfire smoke. The first responders reported that about 15 minutes after the accident there was a lack of contrast on the horizon with smoke, haze, and calm seas, with no discernable horizon visible. The pilot of a rescue helicopter that arrived at the accident site about 30 minutes after the accident confirmed that the smoke and haze, combined with no wind and very calm water, made it impossible to determine where the sky and water met. There was no record that the pilot obtained a weather briefing before the flight. Given the condition of the airplane and the visibility conditions at the time of the accident, it is likely that the pilot was not able to discern between the water and the horizon due to the smoke, haze, and the calm waters which resulted in the inadvertent descent into the water.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from the water while maneuvering in low visibility conditions due to smoke and haze.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23FA257
- Event ID
- 20230623192431
- Case number
- CEN23FA257
- 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, coordinates, 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: 2ce250ba14734ea562c7f18027b3ae8bf83977c5f14918ac5b1f32a306fbd4e0; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:01:36.764Z.