LAX01FA014 · Beech 35-33
Beech 35-33 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Monterey Regional Airport (MRY) to Sacramento Executive Airport (SAC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01FA014
- 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 35-33
- 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
- N1344G
- Operator
- Betty L. Alair · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monterey Regional Airport (MRY), Monterey, CATo Sacramento Executive Airport (SAC), Sacramento, CA
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated pilot, on a special visual flight rules departure clearance, encountered instrument meteorological conditions upon climbing into a layer of clouds. The pilot experienced spatial disorientation, commenced an uncontrolled descending spiral, and impacted the ocean. Prior to departure from the 254-foot msl airport, the pilot had been advised of the local weather conditions, which indicated the cloud base was about 700 feet agl, and the weather was deteriorating, with a decreasing ceiling and lowering visibility. A witness observed the airplane takeoff. The witness reported losing sight of the airplane seconds after it entered the base of the overlying marine layer of stratus clouds. Recorded radar data indicates that within 2 minutes the airplane had climbed to about 1,400 feet, whereupon it entered a right graveyard-like spiral from which it did not recover. Other witnesses located on the shoreline or in boats on the bay reported hearing the sound of an airplane in a dive and observed the airplane fly out of the clouds, diving steeply toward the water. The airplane pulled out of the dive, and then rolled inverted while climbing. Upon reaching the apex of its short climb it dropped suddenly into what appeared to be a straight downward dive and descended at a near 90-degree angle straight into the water. At no time did the airplane's engine sound as if it were under stress, faltering, or sputtering. The extensively crushed and fragmented wreckage was recovered from the bay and examined, with no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures identified.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision by which he conducted visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions and his failure to maintain control of the airplane. Contributing factors were low ceiling, spatial disorientation and lack of instrument rating.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01FA014
- Event ID
- 20001212X22181
- Case number
- LAX01FA014
- 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, coordinates. 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: e283bacff0e8555d9262a0a6b6d3c2b1b542c80fbdeaf607d6de5c85e4e10dc4; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:49:11.627Z.