LAX88FA192 · Beech 35
Beech 35 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Oxnard Airport (OXR) to Porterville, CA (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX88FA192
- 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
- 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
- N3322V
- Operator
- Morton, Francis W. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oxnard Airport (OXR), Oxnard, CATo Porterville, CA (private airstrip)
- 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
- 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); Stall/spin
- 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 › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT AND HIS PASSENGER TOOK OFF ON A CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT OVER MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN WITHOUT OBTAINING A WEATHER BRIEFING OR FILING A FLIGHT PLAN. THE CLOUD LEVELS AT THE AIRPORT OF DEPARTURE WERE REPORTED AS SCATTERED CLOUDS AT 2,500 FEET AND BROKEN CLOUDS AT 10,000 FEET. A RADAR PLOT OF THE AIRCRAFT'S TRACK AFTER TAKEOFF SHOWS THAT IT TURNED ONTO COURSE WHILE CLIMBING. IT MADE A 360 DEGREE CLIMBING TURN THROUGH 4,500-5,000 FEET AND CONTINUED CLIMBING TOWARDS ITS DESTINATION. AS THE AIRCRAFT REACHED 9,500 FEET IT ENTERED A SPIRALING DESCENT. THE AIRCRAFT'S WRECKAGE WAS FOUND ON A MOUNTAIN TWO WEEKS AFTER THE ACCIDENT.
Probable cause
PILOT'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN AN AIRSPEED AT WHICH THE AIRCRAFT IS CONTROLLABLE AND ABOVE THE STALL SPEED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX88FA192
- Event ID
- 20001213X25716
- Case number
- LAX88FA192
- 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: f69a3ff2a3fe2a9f1a5eb8819b9292ea8a012445db2889238d8037a473f0816a; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:43:54.373Z.