FTW98FA339 · Beech H35
Beech H35 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From San Luis Valley Regional Airport/Bergman Field (ALS) to Wittman Regional Airport (OSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA339
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech H35
- 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
- N35DE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Luis Valley Regional Airport/Bergman Field (ALS), Alamosa, COTo Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), Oshkosh, WI
- 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 · climb to 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › Judgment, poor
- Pilot in command › Lack of certification
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non instrument rated private pilot and his passenger were en route from Buckeye, Arizona, to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to attend the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual fly-in. The airplane landed at Alamosa, Colorado, and was refueled. According to the lineman who serviced the airplane, the passenger was apprehensive and expressed concern about the weather conditions. Other pilots attempted to fly through La Veta Pass and were forced to turn back because the pass was obscured. The lineman said that when N35DE departed, the weather was 'pretty nasty.' It had been raining 'off and on,' the sky was overcast, and the mountains to the east were obscured. The airplane was found four days later on the south face of Mount Maestas (elevation 11,569 feet mean sea level (MSL) , about the 9,000 foot level, just below La Veta Pass (summit, 9,413 feet MSL). Examination of the wreckage did not disclose any evidence of mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's poor judgment by intentionally flying into instrument meteorological conditions without proper certification. Factors were his failure to obtain a weather briefing, and the existing weather conditions that included clouds, rain, and obscuration.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA339
- Event ID
- 20001211X10562
- Case number
- FTW98FA339
- 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: 424f0043a1d71755564356aeb43813f1f4e01317dc4859a0a197858463559f04; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:29:33.726Z.