CHI95LA076 · Beech V35A-TC
Beech V35A-TC · Accident: undershoot on approach
From Montevideo Chippewa County Airport (MVE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95LA076
- 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
- 0 · 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 V35A-TC
- 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
- N68DC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montevideo Chippewa County Airport (MVE), Montevideo, MNTo not recorded
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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
- Pilot in command › Distance/altitude, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT REPORTED THERE WAS LIGHT BLOWING SNOW AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT. THE AIRPORT ENVIRONMENT AND RUNWAY WERE COVERED WITH ONE TO TWO INCHES OF NEW SNOW. HE CANCELLED IFR ABOUT 15 MILES FROM HIS DESTINATION AND CONTINUED UNDER VFR. HE SAID HE INTENDED TO MAKE A LOW PASS TO OBSERVE THE CONDITION OF THE SNOW COVERED RUNWAY. HE LOWERED THE LANDING GEAR AND FULL FLAPS, TURNED ON TO THE RUNWAY HEADING, AND OBSERVED THE ALTIMETER INDICATION AT 820 FEET. BEFORE HE REALIZED IT, THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED THE TERRAIN SHORT OF RUNWAY 33.
Probable cause
the pilot's misjudgement of the actual altitude of the airplane. Factors were the visual illusion caused by the snow covered runway environment and the whiteout weather condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95LA076
- Event ID
- 20001207X02843
- Case number
- CHI95LA076
- 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: bd079b11cee7336253e1b04c7b44ffa632c2372feb9daa011045995b07f40fa1; retrieved 2026-09-23T00:17:47.201Z.