SEA00FA033 · Beech 95-B55
Beech 95-B55 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during initial climb
From Hermiston Municipal Airport (HRI) to Madras Municipal Airport (S33)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00FA033
- 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 95-B55
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 55
- 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
- N8129R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hermiston Municipal Airport (HRI), ORTo Madras Municipal Airport (S33), Madras, OR
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly before departure, the pilot was issued an instrument flight rules (IFR) clearance from Hermiston, Oregon to Madras, Oregon. Shortly thereafter, the aircraft departed the airport from runway 04. A witness observed the aircraft enter a shallow turn to the right (south) shortly after departure, however, he lost sight of the aircraft due to trees obscuring his view. Approximately 5 minutes later, the local police received report of a downed aircraft southeast of the airport. The aircraft impacted terrain approximately 1/4 mile south of the departure end of the runway, in a right wing low attitude. The accident occurred during the hours of darkness. Low ceilings and visibility were reported at the time of the accident. No evidence was found to indicate a mechanical malfunction or failure.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance with terrain. Factors include a dark night, low ceilings and mist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00FA033
- Event ID
- 20001212X20319
- Case number
- SEA00FA033
- 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 1999-12-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 887c4ff953a624796279ca4e2b3c1283266dde720837528ed4201fdb9201bb4d; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:33:22.548Z.