LAX96FA086 · Beech V35B
Beech V35B · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Cottonwood Airport (P52) to DLO
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96FA086
- 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 V35B
- 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
- N7337R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cottonwood Airport (P52), Cottonwood, AZTo DLO
- 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 · circling (IFR)
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During arrival, the Beech V35B pilot was cleared for a VOR runway 32 approach. At about the time he was beginning the final approach, the pilot commented that he was experiencing some disorientation. A vector was provided to correct back to course, and the pilot continued the approach. While in a circling maneuver at the conclusion of the approach, the airplane was observed to be flying in the base of clouds. A witness reported that the airplane pitched up abruptly into the clouds, and then it appeared out of the clouds in a steep dive that continued until impact. The weather was estimated near minimums for the approach. After purchasing the Beech V35B, the pilot had completed a 15 hour high performance (VFR) checkout on 10/26/95. His instructor recommended that after getting additional experience in the Beech V35B, he get an instrument checkout in the high performance airplane; instead, he took an instrument proficience check in a Piper PA-28.
Probable cause
Failure of the pilot to maintain control of the aircraft during an IFR circling approach. A factor relating to the accident was: the pilot's lack of instrument flight experience in high performance aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96FA086
- Event ID
- 20001207X05022
- Case number
- LAX96FA086
- 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: feb008648a64c05f58f2d8040b02ca804681d84bae3050a922d23a19dcf86636; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:28:34.209Z.