DEN01FA064 · Beech V35
Beech V35 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Wendover Airport (ENV) to Eureka Airport (05U)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN01FA064
- 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
- 3 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech V35
- 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
- N5757K
- Operator
- Leland C.Lewis
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wendover Airport (ENV), Wendover, UTTo Eureka Airport (05U), Eureka, NV
- 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
- Maneuvering · turn to reverse direction
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness, who watched the non-instrument rated private pilot make the night takeoff, said there was a light rain falling and the skies were overcast. Radar data disclosed a primary target just east of Wendover on a southwesterly track. It made a turn and flew north, passing Wendover. It flew towards the northeast, then turned northwest and held this course, then made a 270 degree turn to the left, followed by another left turn of at least 270 degrees. It then continued on an easterly course until radar contact was lost. No mode C (altitude reporting) returns were recorded. The accident site was in mountainous terrain at the 6,944-foot level near the point where radar contact was lost. Examination of the wreckage indicated the airplane impacted terrain in a steep nose down attitude.
Probable cause
The pilot flying at an altitude insufficient to clear surrounding terrain. Contributing factors were the pilot becoming lost/disoriented, his subsequent spatial disorientation, and dark night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN01FA064
- Event ID
- 20010316X00597
- Case number
- DEN01FA064
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-02-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6ea97d7f8dcda896a6f57724b9be34f7ead414cf629e2016f4e6d07247f9ff14; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:39:05.196Z.