MIA00FA090 · Beech 35-P35
Beech 35-P35 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From 2A0 to Fort Worth, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00FA090
- 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 35-P35
- 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
- N9796Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2A0To Fort Worth, TX
- 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
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, intentional
- Pilot in command › Lack of certification
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of N9796Y called the Air Traffic Control Specialist at the Automated Flight Service Station (AFSS), for a weather briefing from Dayton, Tennessee, to the Fort Worth, Texas area, for a proposed flight that afternoon. The specialist's issued him a detailed synopsis with emphasis on forecast thunderstorms and IFR conditions. There were AIRMETS (Airman's Meteorological Information) for IFR conditions along the route of flight until 1800 UTC (1400). The specialist told the pilot that the system would take about 24 to 36 hours to clear, and the phone call ended. The pilot again called the AFSS, and he told the specialist that the flight would have to be 'VFR only......I'm...v f r I need to go v f r....' The pilot was issued the AIRMETS, conditions, and forecast information showing IFR conditions, and given a forecast for continued IFR. The specialist told the pilot that it was '...highly improbable (VFR).' According to a witness at the departure airport, who saw the airplane take off, and watched it disappear into the clouds, '...the ceiling appeared to be about 600 to 900 feet high.' Another witness about 3 miles from the crash site said when she saw the airplane it was flying 'low' as it came out of the clouds. She said the engine seemed to 'sound normal,' and the airplane was heading in a southwest direction. The witness said that at the time the weather was, '...overcast, foggy, misting rain.' A police officer that had responded to the reported crash site at 1311, said, 'due to the fog, the visibility was approximately 20 to 30 feet. According to local police records the airplane was found by a ground search at 1649. FAA records indicated that the pilot did not possess an instrument rating at the time of the accident. The pilot's personal logbook listing his flight hours was not recovered. Based on his last application for insurance, dated April 20, 1999, it was estimated that the pilot had about 1,207 hours of total flight time in all aircraft, and 36 hours in this make and model airplane, at the time of the application. The airplane impacted in a heavily wooded area, in rising terrain. The elevation at the crash site was about 1,910 feet mean sea level. The elevation at the departure airport was 855 feet.
Probable cause
the non-instrumented rated pilot elected to takeoff into known adverse weather conditions, which resulted in impact with rising terrain. Factors in this accident were, clouds and low ceilings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00FA090
- Event ID
- 20001212X20529
- Case number
- MIA00FA090
- 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: 860fac1d282918864351b6654589f1b7d20b17c9fd5b34ef245c386febe86ce7; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:27:19.586Z.