FTW97FA292 · Beech F35
Beech F35 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Sundance Airpark (HSD) to Trenton Municipal Airport (TRX)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97FA292
- 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
- Unknown
Beech F35
- 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
- N3835B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sundance Airpark (HSD), Oklahoma City, OKTo Trenton Municipal Airport (TRX), Trenton, MO
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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 › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The left wing separated as the noninstrument-rated private pilot penetrated thunderstorms. The flight originated from the Sundance Airport, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, about 0800, en route to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with a planned fuel stop at Trenton, Missouri. Weather radar data and radar ground track showed the airplane proceeding to the northeast and initially outside of precipitation and in visual meteorological conditions. About the time the airplane made an initial deviation towards the south, the radar data indicated that it was in the vicinity of an area of convection. The airplane flew south until it was clear of the first shower/thunderstorm and then turned toward the northeast to resume course. The radar data indicated that shortly after resuming the northeast track, the airplane penetrated a VIP level three or four developing thunderstorm and remained in the cell until ground impact. Local residents near the accident site reported that there were thunderstorms and heavy rain in the area around the time of the accident. According to FAA records, there were no weather briefings given to the pilot. The pilot had a total of 1.9 hours simulated instrument time recorded in his pilot logbook.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into adverse weather and the loss of aircraft control which resulted in the aircraft exceeding its design stress limits. Factors were the pilot's failure to obtain a weather briefing and the adverse weather.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97FA292
- Event ID
- 20001208X08361
- Case number
- FTW97FA292
- 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: f13c27bc8e3b824eb832771ff00ee4977d8a7be97c00366c9c7e3e6729169cbc; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:52:49.913Z.