NYC00FA119 · Beech N35
Beech N35 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From 78D · Caro, MI to Newport News Williamsburg International Airport (PHF)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00FA119
- 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 N35
- 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
- N1253Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 78D · Caro, MITo Newport News Williamsburg International Airport (PHF), Newport News, VA
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight at 9,000 feet, the pilot radioed air traffic control (ATC) that he experienced a gyro failure and "I do not have any artificial horizon my gyro uh I got the compass and the airspeed indicator...I uh I have to stay on top cause I haven't got my artificial horizon." The controller then observed the airplane climbing to a higher altitude and stated to the pilot, "I'm showing you at uh nine thousand eight hundred I don't have any traffic in that area if you can't hold an altitude that's fine just do the best you can." The pilot replied to the controller , "try to see what uh what I can rely on here and what I can't take it back to nine uh it's startin to open up here right now." When the pilot was asked by the controller if he could descend to 7,000 feet and stay on top, the pilot replied, "right now I'm pre I'm almost I'm in the clouds right now." The airplane separated into pieces and descended to the ground. The pilot's last recorded log book entry for flight in actual instrument conditions was about 30 months prior to the accident, which was for 1.3 hours. The pilot's last endorsement for an instrument competency check was about 5 years prior to the accident flight. Examination of the vacuum pump drive shaft with a binocular microscope revealed circular features consistent with torsional overstress. Weather reported at an airport 35 miles south of the accident site included scattered clouds at 4,400 feet, and broken clouds at 8,000 and 10,000 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's in-flight decision to continue flight into IMC conditions, and his failure to maintain control of the airplane. Factors related to the accident were the failure of the vacuum pump and the pilot's lack of recent instrument time.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00FA119
- Event ID
- 20001212X20893
- Case number
- NYC00FA119
- 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: aa8e8b2a051b26aefac781e5edb2c974a227bb29c992743e98ad9ded58070869; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:18:30.376Z.