Ameriflight Beech BE99 incident
Beech BE99 · Incident: loss of control in flight en route
From Hollywood Burbank/Bob Hope Airport (BUR) to Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98IA097
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 BE99
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 99
- 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
- N20FW
- Operator
- Ameriflight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hollywood Burbank/Bob Hope Airport (BUR), Burbank, CATo Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK), Oakland, 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Fluid, water › Frozen
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft encountered elevator control problems while en route and landed safely at his destination. During a post-landing inspection, ice formation was found in the tail section of the aircraft in an area surrounding the elevator control cables. The water drain hole and limbers that evacuate this area were found clogged with fuzz-like fibers.
Probable cause
Water accumulation in the tail section of the aircraft that froze around the elevator control cables which restricted the movement of the elevator. Contributing factors were the accumulation of debris in the limbers and drain hole for the affected area. A finding was the fact that this area cannot be easily inspected by the pilot due to the need for hand tools to gain visual access.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98IA097
- Event ID
- 20001211X09568
- Case number
- LAX98IA097
- 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, damage. 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: 53adc6bd791d97209efb659f97414a241d14bf0ab48e95bb633d616fa94c630f; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:12:48.591Z.