On the morning of January 8, 2003, the Beechcraft stalled while departing Charlotte Douglas International Airport and crashed into an aircraft hangar, killing all 21 passengers and crew aboard and injuring one person on the ground.

After take-off, the plane climbed steeply as a result of higher than calculated weight on the aircraft that generated an incorrect CG readout.

[7] Though both pilots pushed forward on the control column, the plane did not respond to their input, which led to the stalling of the aircraft.

The aircraft's most recent service involved adjusting the elevator control cable, and was performed two nights before the crash by Vertex Aerospace[8] at a repair facility located at Tri-State Airport in Huntington, West Virginia.

[1]: 11  The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) noted that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was aware of "serious deficiencies" in the training procedures at the facility, but had done nothing to correct them.

When checked, the NTSB found that the actual weight of an average passenger was more than 20 pounds (9 kg) greater than estimated.

After checking the actual weight of baggage retrieved from the crash site and passengers (based on information from next-of-kin and the medical examiner), the aircraft was found to be actually 580 lb (264 kg) above its maximum allowable take-off weight, with its center of gravity 5% to the rear of the allowable limit.

Neither problem alone would have caused the loss of control, which explains why it had previously been flown without incident and had safely departed Huntington, West Virginia.

The crash was featured in season five of the Canadian-made, internationally distributed documentary series Mayday, in an episode titled "Dead Weight".