LAX97LA254 · Beech 77
Beech 77 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From 1O2 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA254
- 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
- 0 · 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 77
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 77
- 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
- N1848F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1O2To 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
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Flightcrew › Carburetor heat, not used
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was owned and operated by the pilot and was on a local instructional flight to complete the pilot's biennial flight review. The pilot and instructor reported that they were performing a series of slow flight maneuvers and stalls. The engine lost power and could not be restarted, and the pilots were forced to land in a vineyard. On-ground collision with grape vines and the supporting wooden posts and wires damaged the aircraft. An FAA inspector reported that rotation of the crankshaft produced compression in each cylinder, with accessory gear and valve train continuity established. The carburetor and fuel system were examined, with no abnormality noted. Both magnetos sparked with hand rotation. About 13 miles west at Ukiah, California, the 0845 weather observation showed that the temperature and dew point were 60 and 51 degrees Fahrenheit. Review of a carburetor icing probability chart revealed that the temperature and dew point were within an area of the graph annotated 'serious icing - cruise or climb power.'
Probable cause
carburetor ice, and the failure of both pilot's to use (or properly use) carburetor heat. Factors relating to the accident were: the weather (carburetor icing) conditions, and obstructions in the forced landing area (grape vineyard).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA254
- Event ID
- 20001208X08439
- Case number
- LAX97LA254
- 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: 9dc7c91c619576bfb2c389349501b23538de2fe40768f37c4151c1b3436402ef; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:03:34.390Z.