MIA00FA069 · Beech P-35
Beech P-35 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Bowman Field (LOU) to Hawkins County Airport (RVN)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00FA069
- 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
- 1 · 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 P-35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft P-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
- N9740Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bowman Field (LOU), Louisville, KYTo Hawkins County Airport (RVN), TN
- 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 · descent
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At 1532, the pilot of N9740Y departed on a visual flight rules (VFR) flight, and during the flight he had been receiving VFR flight following. According to the FAA transcript of communications, the pilot had twice requested progressively lower altitudes to maintain VFR. The controller approved the second request for a lower altitude, but told the pilot that at that altitude Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) might not be able to maintain radar contact with his aircraft at that low an altitude. The pilot's third request was for 7,500 feet to avoid turbulence, and at 1619 the pilot changed his destination from Tri-cities Regional Airport to Hawkins County Airport. At 1622:39 the pilot reported to that he was descending out of five thousand three hundred feet. The controller acknowledged, providing the local altimeter setting for the nearest weather reporting station, the Tri-Cities Airport. At 1622:50 the pilot acknowledged the Tri-cities altimeter setting, stating, 'three zero two six roger.' At 1628.26 the controller said, 'niner seven four zero yankee radar contact lost squawk one two zero zero cleared to advisory frequency good afternoon'. The controller made one last transmission at 1628:26, saying 'niner seven four zero yankee Atlanta.' There were no further communications with the pilot of N9740Y. N9740Y struck Clinch mountain, about 6.7 miles northwest of Hawkins County Airport, in a level flight attitude, as indicated by the freshly cut trees, at an altitude of about 2,350 feet, about 50 feet below the 2,400-foot elevation. At the time of the accident, the Tri-Cities Regional Airport was reporting a ceiling of 1,300 feet overcast. Witnesses at Hawkins County Airport stated that the ceiling and visibility had been both low at Hawkins County Airport, and the airport had been closed due to the weather. The pilot held a private pilot airplane single engine land certificate, with no instrument rating.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper in-flight planning/decision and continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) that resulted in an in-flight collision with terrain and subsequent damage to the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00FA069
- Event ID
- 20001212X20405
- Case number
- MIA00FA069
- 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: 1930501ba7cadc4a0ad03e45d88bcb26dca9b8ae80baa22631bcc7486f6845bb; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:30:01.383Z.