LAX98LA114 · Socata TBM 700
Socata TBM 700 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From O56 · Novato, CA to Juwata International Airport / Suharnoko Harbani AFB (TRK)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA114
- 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
Socata TBM 700
- Aircraft type
- Socata TBM-700
- 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
- N345RD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From O56 · Novato, CATo Juwata International Airport / Suharnoko Harbani AFB (TRK)
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Truckee, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was cleared for a GPS approach. He stated that he was too high to make a good landing, so he opted for a circling approach to another runway. As he turned for the base leg, he lost visual contact and became disoriented. It was a dark night with no moon. The pilot realized that he was in a 70- to 80-degree left bank and returned the airplane to a level attitude, then noticed the ground directly in front of him. The aircraft ran through a barbed wire fence, collided with trees, and slid rearward to a stop in a high altitude meadow east of the airport. The FAA completed an evaluation of the circling approach procedures and night operations for that airport and did not find any problems.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain control of the aircraft due to spatial disorientation. A factor was the dark night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA114
- Event ID
- 20001211X09714
- Case number
- LAX98LA114
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-03-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4fb4737a79cf3ba164d3483bf1a6fc8e539abb94a4fb5865588285015db95413; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:54:03.430Z.