LAX95FA297 · Beech D55
Beech D55 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Visalia Municipal Airport (VIS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX95FA297
- 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 D55
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 55
- 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
- N4884J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Visalia Municipal Airport (VIS), Visalia, CATo 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
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Stall/spin
- 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
- Designated examiner › Supervision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was for the designated pilot examiner to reexamine the private pilot for a multiengine class rating flight test. During the previous flight test, the applicant pilot failed to maintain altitude during a simulated engine failure while flying a practice instrument approach under simulated instrument conditions. Thereafter, the pilot received 1.5 hours of remedial flight instruction from his flight instructor. During the accident flight test, radar data showed the airplane paralleling the outbound course of the VOR instrument approach at the procedure turn altitude. Witnesses observed the airplane descending in a flat spin and crash into an open field. Examination of the wreckage revealed the right engine's propeller blades had damage to all three blades consistent with rotation. The left engine's propeller blades had one blade undamaged and two blades bent aft. No evidence was found indicating that any of the blades had been feathered; and no evidence was found of any mechanical malfunctions. The airplane was equipped with a throw over type of control column for elevator and aileron control and was located in front of the applicant. The decision to use an airplane without dual flight controls is at the discretion of the examiner.
Probable cause
the failure of the pilot to maintain sufficient airspeed during a simulated engine failure to avoid an inadvertent stall/spin, and inadequate supervision by the designated pilot examiner. A factor in the accident was the decision of the examiner to use an airplane without dual flight controls during a multiengine airplane flight test.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX95FA297
- Event ID
- 20001207X04271
- Case number
- LAX95FA297
- 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: 24c20f2faf062f204839fa3c38b4573ac9593251d4d0e3546dea24aa42afabf9; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:39:50.963Z.