LAX96FA042 · Beech S35
Beech S35 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK) to California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport (ACV)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96FA042
- 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 S35
- 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
- N8920M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK), Oakland, CATo California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport (ACV), Arcata, 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
- 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
- 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 › IFR procedure, not followed
- Pilot in command › Missed approach, not attained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › Spiral, not corrected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During arrival after nightfall, the pilot was provided vectors for an ILS Runway 32 Approach to Arcata, CA. He was instructed to intercept the localizer at or above 6,000 feet, then he was cleared for the approach. Radar contact with the airplane was lost about 22 miles from the airport. Subsequently, the airplane crashed on mountainous terrain at an elevation of about 2200 feet. During investigation, radar data showed that the airplane was inbound on the ILS approach, slightly left of the localizer centerline. After about 1 minute, it began a uniform left turn of about 30 degrees, followed immediately by an equally uniform right turn. The radius of the right turn began to decrease until the aircraft disappeared from radar after about 270 degrees of turn. The wreckage was found in proximity of the last radar return. No preimpact mechanical failure was noted during examination of the wreckage, although the airplane was destroyed during impact. Another person, who had flown with the pilot as he practiced instrument flight procedures, noted that on occasions, the pilot turned the wrong way; and at times, also gave the impression of having difficulty in maintaining aircraft control.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to correct a descending spiral and perform a missed approach, after becoming spatially disoriented and deviating from the planned ILS approach procedure. Factors relating to the accident were: darkness, and the pilot's excessive maneuvering of the airplane, while on the ILS approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96FA042
- Event ID
- 20001207X04864
- Case number
- LAX96FA042
- 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 1995-11-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f9b8d8407585ef83721165b260c4fa09fdf2a5483ed4797aeb9d94de57823377; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:32:20.319Z.