LAX03LA024 · Beech 35
Beech 35 · Accident: vortex turbulence encountered on approach
From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM) to John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA024
- 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 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
- N3373C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM), San Diego, CATo John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA), Santa Ana, CA
- 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 pattern final
- 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
- Vortex turbulence encountered
- 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
- Atc personnel(lcl/gnd/clnc) › Control tower service, inadequate
- Atc personnel(lcl/gnd/clnc) › Procedures/directives, not followed
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Wake turbulence, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot encountered wake turbulence while on final approach to runway 19L. He was cleared to land and advised to look for a Boeing 757 on a 4-mile final for the parallel runway, 19R. After reporting it in sight, the Boeing 757 overtook him. He said he attempted to "stay high and land long on 19L"; however, as the Boeing 757 touched down, the airplane entered a "violent snap roll to the right, looking down at the ground." The airplane impacted the ground short of the runway. During the approach, controllers allowed simultaneous operations on parallel runways by the Boeing 757 airplane and the small general aviation airplane. FAA Order 7110.65N states that a minimum distance between runway centerlines of 700 feet is required for simultaneous same direction operations between large aircraft and lightweight single and multiengine propeller driven airplanes. The distance between the centerlines of runways 19R and 19L is approximately 505 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's encounter with wake turbulence resulting in a loss of control. A related factor was insufficient separation by air traffic control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA024
- Event ID
- 20021113X05467
- Case number
- LAX03LA024
- 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: fa644e372c6ed69347fb711dc2a8b6c0f2bd67251830a6d46f1076b53995a1e2; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:33:09.888Z.