LAX01LA095 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Palo Alto Airport (PAO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA095
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N3191A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, CATo not recorded
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, low
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane's right wing struck the ground and the airplane came to rest on the runway following a loss of control on an attempted go-around. The pilot had received 107.9 hours of dual instruction and was making his first solo flight in the airplane. The purpose of the flight was to practice takeoffs and landings. The pilot selected approach flaps on downwind but never checked their position. On short final, the pilot sensed his descent rate was too great and attempted a go-around. The airplane drifted towards the left and then rolled right continuing to descend until it struck the ground. Postcrash examination of the engine and propeller revealed impact damage that was consistent with the propeller having contacted the ground in a high airplane pitch attitude, and a propeller blade angle consistent with a "power on" condition.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's delayed decision to go-around and his failure to maintain sufficient airspeed during the attempted go-around. His non-verification of the flap setting contributed to the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA095
- Event ID
- 20010221X00487
- Case number
- LAX01LA095
- 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: deec061dce1578cbe126024ca95776d2e77ed610e2b8826b1d4e6763440aa633; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:10:27.807Z.