BFO89FA029 · Beech C35
Beech C35 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB) to Greenbrier Valley Airport (LWB)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO89FA029
- 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
- 4 · 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 C35
- 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
- N9502C
- Operator
- Jon M. Metz · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB), Parkersburg, WVTo Greenbrier Valley Airport (LWB), Lewisburg, WV
- 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
- 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); Tree(s)
- 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 › Altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PVT PLT AND 3 PAX DPTD PARKERSBURG (PKB) EN ROUTE TO LEWISBURG (LWB). ALTHOUGH NO WITNESSES COULD BE FOUND WHO SAW THE ACCIDENT, A LADY DID OBSERVE AN ACFT FLYING TOWARD LWB AT AN ALT OF APRX 700-800 FT AGL AS IT PASSED OVER HER RESIDENCE WHICH WAS AT AN ELEVATION OF 2,600 FT AGL. SHE INDICATED THAT THE CEILING WAS SOLID OVERCAST ABOVE THE ACFT AND THAT THE ENGINE SOUNDED NORMAL. EXAMINATION OF THE 3,800 FT MSL WRECKAGE SITE DID NOT REVEALANY PREIMPACT FAILURES OR MALFUNCTIONS OF THE AIRFRAME OR ENGINE. A CFI FLYING 5 MILES SOUTHEAST OF THE ACCIDENT SITE ABOUT 45 MINUTES PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT OBSERVED MOUNTAIN TOPS THAT WERE TOTALLY OBSCURED BY CLOUDS AND HEAVY SNOW SHOWERS.
Probable cause
PILOT INADVERTANTLY FLEW INTO IMC WHILE TRYING TO MAINTAIN VFR AND COLLIDED WITH TREES DURING A STEEP TURN DURING HIS ATTEMPT TO TURN AWAY FROM IMC. THE WEATHER CONDITIONS THAT WERE DETERMINED TO BE FACTORS IN THIS ACCIDENT WERE: LOW CEILINGS, OBSCURATION, SNOW, AND TURBULENCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO89FA029
- Event ID
- 20001213X28044
- Case number
- BFO89FA029
- 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: 07fda0f109c20717cc8cd6a057e909c785769ef2fadfb6bd692a1d679537aab2; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:21:19.889Z.