LAX98FA297 · Beech 35-B33
Beech 35-B33 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98FA297
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Beech 35-B33
- 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
- N486W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), CATo 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After washing the airplane, the pilot took off for a short night flight to dry it. Family members reported that the pilot's habit was to do a 15- to 20-minute flight after washing the airplane. A witness near the accident site saw the airplane's nose pointed downward and its red and green position lights spiraling around as it descended. Another witness located closer to the impact location heard loud sustained engine sounds 'like a kamikaze in a dive.' The airplane collided with trees and hilly terrain and the extensively fragmented wreckage was spread over a 100- by 200-foot debris field. The aircraft sounds terminated after a few seconds with the sound of '2 cars hitting each other.' The pilot's last reported flight review was conducted in a helicopter. The last pilot logbook entry was dated May 28, 1997, the date of the last flight review. According to the aircraft logbook, the pilot would have averaged about 1.8 flight hours per month in the airplane during the past 11.5 months. Weather observations reported clear skies with no visibility restrictions. There was no moon illumination. The only ground reference lights were from the city, which was located north and west of the accident site. No preimpact failures or malfunctions were found during the wreckage examination.
Probable cause
the pilot's loss of aircraft control and entry into a spiral dive for undetermined reasons. The dark night lighting conditions and the pilot's probable low recent flight experience were factors in this accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98FA297
- Event ID
- 20001211X11087
- Case number
- LAX98FA297
- 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 1998-09-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6a82a89501e743778270812f7ed9b225a33c8bcef305d9807508c5a8e4c57c9d; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:24:48.504Z.