FTW97FA067 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Raton Municipal Airport / Crews Field (RTN) to Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97FA067
- 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
- 6 · 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 A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N3869A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raton Municipal Airport / Crews Field (RTN), Raton, NMTo Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU), Glendale, AZ
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 terrain/water
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Chacon, NM, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with rugged, mountainous terrain while on a VFR cross country flight. According to all available information, the airplane was en route at an altitude between 9,000 and 13,000 feet MSL. Mountain peaks along the route of flight were in the 9,000 to 13,000 foot range. Area Pilot Reports (PIREPS) 16 for light airplanes, and weather observations confirmed that the airplane had flown into about 50-55 knot upper level headwinds, and through moderate to severe turbulence. One PIREP indicated that 'up' and 'down' drafts exceeded 1,000 feet per minute. Another PIREP indicated that 'stacked lenticular clouds were observed at a magnitude that he had not seen before.' According to the NTSB Meteorology Factual Report, the airplane was in severe to extreme turbulent air, and that mountain wave conditions may have been present at the time of the accident. The 8,200 hour pilot was familiar with the route of flight, and no condition of incapacitation was found during the autopsy. Examination of the airframe, engine, and propeller did not reveal any evidence of pre-impact failure(s).
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain altitude and clearance from the high, mountainous terrain. Factors were; high wind, turbulence, and mountain wave conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97FA067
- Event ID
- 20001208X07152
- Case number
- FTW97FA067
- 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: 0d7d13443f30cc345d499b15ada79fdb9639aac9f07739c936308d4c3022ecd0; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:05:02.487Z.