ERA23LA342 · Beech C23
Beech C23 · Accident: fuel related during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA342
- 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
- 2 · 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
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
- N9360S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Fuel related
- 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
The pilot and mechanic were performing a postmaintenance test flight following an annual inspection of the airplane. A witness reported that the airplane took off from a private airstrip and, as the airplane passed his house, he heard a slight reduction in engine speed followed by a slight increase. The engine did not sputter or backfire. The airplane then turned toward the northwest and reached an altitude of about 500 ft above the ground. The witness observed that the left wing dipped twice then leveled off, and the airplane descended as it turned to a westerly heading. The airplane descended from his view behind a tree line, then he heard it impact the ground. The witness’s statement was generally consistent with a video that captured the accident sequence; however, the video also showed that the airplane developed a sink rate with the nose slightly up, then the nose dropped shortly before ground impact. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of a preexisting mechanical malfunction or anomaly that would have precluded normal operation. Although damage to the propeller was indicative of rotation at impact, the signatures indicated that the engine may have been running at reduced power. The temperature and dew point near the accident site were conducive to serious carburetor icing at glide (idle) power. Although it is not known how long the airplane was operated on the ground before takeoff, ground operations, such as taxi, are typically performed at low engine power settings. Additionally, it is not known if or for how long the pilot may have used carburetor heat before taking off. Given the weather conditions at the time of the accident and the lack of any mechanical issues found during the postaccident examination, it is likely that carburetor icing formed, resulting in a loss of engine power during the initial climb after takeoff. It is also possible that, while diagnosing the loss of engine power, the pilot allowed the airspeed to decay, resulting in an aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during the initial climb due to the formation of carburetor ice, resulting in reduced climb capability. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to maintain proper airspeed during the emergency descent, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack and a subsequent aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA342
- Event ID
- 20230820192900
- Case number
- ERA23LA342
- 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: cbb4a4af517a77ac101e1cc5cdd34996546263e80e3ad42f278209c1bfbe66cd; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:05:00.396Z.