SEA99FA027 · Beech 58P
Beech 58P · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From La Grande/Union County Airport (LGD) to Aurora State Airport (UAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99FA027
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech 58P
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 58
- 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
- N700LF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Grande/Union County Airport (LGD), La Grande, ORTo Aurora State Airport (UAO), Aurora, OR
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 collision with object
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While the pilot was en route to his intended destination on a dark night, the weather lowered to less than visual flight rules (VFR) minimums. Approach control therefore cleared the pilot direct to the associated VOR for a VOR DME approach. Once at the VOR, the pilot said he could see the ground and was going to descend and make a visual approach. Approach control asked the pilot if he was asking for a contact approach or canceling his IFR clearance, and then explained to him that he could not be cleared for a visual approach unless he could see the airport. The pilot responded that he wanted to shoot a contact approach, and approach cleared him to do so. Soon thereafter the aircraft was seen maneuvering underneath a low ceiling, in hilly terrain, where ground fog was present. While maneuvering in the hilly terrain, the aircraft collided with a row of pine trees near the top of a hill, and continued on for about 1,000 feet before impacting a thick stand of hardwood trees.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from hilly terrain while maneuvering below a low ceiling. Factors include a dark night, a low ceiling, fog, and hilly terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99FA027
- Event ID
- 20001204X00112
- Case number
- SEA99FA027
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-01-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e7b422ba9638b4591d3df839893ffc0046fde6d0e2988a361cfb376c81d35006; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:16:31.608Z.