LAX99FA077 · Beech F35
Beech F35 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Corona Municipal Airport (AJO) to Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99FA077
- 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
- 4 · 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 F35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N3364C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corona Municipal Airport (AJO), Corona, CATo Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL), LAKE TAHOE, CA
- 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 · climb to cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The departure was planned for about 0430. No record was found that the pilot obtained a preflight weather briefing through an FAA or NWS source. Surrounding airports were reporting cloud coverage in the area of the accident site between 700 and 1,000 feet above ground level, with visibility's 3 miles or less. A terminal forecast for the area predicted visibility of 3 miles in mist, temporarily 1 mile in mist, between 0400 and 0600. An airmet was in effect for ceilings below 1,000 feet and visibility 3 miles in fog and mist for the departure area. The airmet noted occasional ceilings below 1,000 feet and visibility less than 3 miles in fog and precipitation for portions of the en route phase and at the destination. Mountain obscuration in clouds and precipitation was also forecasted. The departure airport was surrounded by hilly terrain with tops 1,000 to 3,000 feet above the airport elevation. Recorded radar data tracked the airplane from 500 feet agl to the accident site at 1,112 feet msl (about 600 feet above the airport). The airplane was climbing and completed one 360-degree turn, achieving 2,500 feet msl. The turn continued in a much tighter radius and the airplane lost 500 feet of altitude. The airplane completed one more turn as it continued to descend to impact about 3 miles west of the airport. The most conservative weight and balance computation placed the airplane 241.2 pounds over maximum allowable gross weight with a CG location 2.57 inches aft of the rear limit. No discrepancies were found with the airplane or engine upon inspection. The pilot did not possess an instrument rating.
Probable cause
The pilot's intentional flight into known instrument meteorological conditions in hilly terrain and his failure to maintain aircraft control due to spatial disorientation. Factors were the pilot's inadequate evaluation of the weather conditions, dark night conditions and the poor weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99FA077
- Event ID
- 20001204X00068
- Case number
- LAX99FA077
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 8a5cbfc41f8265694adbd14ca968e59f771e4b674c406e229d905e2836d17ef9; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:16:11.281Z.