LAX02FA278 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP) to Liberal Mid-America Regional Airport (LBL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02FA278
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N8261J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP), Bullhead City, AZTo Liberal Mid-America Regional Airport (LBL), Liberal, KS
- 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
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Weather condition › Icing conditions
- Weather condition › Turbulence(thunderstorms)
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane departed from controlled flight after encountering forecast conditions including moderate turbulence and icing during a cross-country instrument flight and collided with the ground in a near vertical spinning descent. The airplane was equipped with a Stormscope, but not weather radar. The pilot received a preflight weather briefing that included advisories for icing conditions, scattered thunderstorms, and moderate to severe turbulence. The briefer advised that radar indicated a large area of echoes extended over the route of flight with light to moderate intensities and that cloud tops were up to 24,000 feet with scattered thunderstorms and a high likelihood of icing conditions between 15,000 and 24,000 feet. The pilot filed his IFR flight plan with a cruising altitude of 17,000 feet. After takeoff and achieving 17,000 feet, the pilot asked the center controller for a clearance to a higher altitude of 19,000 feet, which was approved. Within the next 3 minutes the pilot made a request to deviate to the left and then to climb higher to 21,000 feet, which were all approved. Shortly thereafter, the pilot advised he "really went through some bad turbulence here," and the controller inquired about his heading and altitude. The pilot advised he wanted to climb back to altitude but he was still in IMC conditions. That was the last communication from the flight. According to the controller's memory of the radar display, the airplane was getting into some weather and had deviated north, made a u-turn and had gone down to 19,000 feet, and had started getting back on course when it disappeared. The requests from the pilot to climb to higher altitude was likely made to climb out of icing conditions and an attempt to climb over some of the towering cumulus clouds tops. A limited overlay of weather echoes that would have been available to the controller. The controller provided no weather deviations or support even after the flight encountered some weather, lost altitude, and reported encountering significant turbulence. The weather data showed a shear level was at 19,800 feet, with a 11.1 knot per 1,000 feet change in wind speed. This shear layer had a high probability of severe turbulence. The data also showed a 92 percent probability of rime icing at 20,000 feet.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision and his failure to maintain adequate airspeed which resulted in an encounter with adverse weather conditions and the loss of control due to a stall. Contributing factors were thunderstorm related turbulence, icing conditions, the pilot's disregard of the weather forecast.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02FA278
- Event ID
- 20020913X01598
- Case number
- LAX02FA278
- 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: 00f21b3fc5c446be21a7bef5887dd59c2f75d768f763c6f58723d7ee96cfc15b; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:52:36.072Z.