CHI03LA072 · Beech V35
Beech V35 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Oakland County International Airport (PTK) to Paul C. Miller-Sparta Airport (8D4)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA072
- 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
- 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
- N9439S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MITo Paul C. Miller-Sparta Airport (8D4), Sparta, MI
- 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
- 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
- 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, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, performed
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, improper
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 landed hard and the left main landing gear collapsed. The airplane subsequently impacted a snow bank. The pilot stated he received two preflight weather briefings and decided to make the flight under visual flight rules due to reports of icing conditions in the clouds. He indicated he experienced freezing rain during cruise. The stated that he requested and received an instrument flight rules clearance and climbed above the clouds. He stated that he used a VOR approach for landing and did not experience any icing while on approach. The pilot indicated he lowered the flaps and the aircraft began to descend rapidly, subsequently impacting the runway and collapsing the left main landing gear. A witness reported the aircraft had 1/2 to 3/4 inch of ice on the leading edge of the tail and wings. The weather observation facility 18 miles to the southeast, reported the weather about the time of the accident as: winds 200 degrees magnetic at 8 knots; visibility 2 statute miles with freezing drizzle; sky condition overcast 500 feet above ground level; temperature -3 degrees Celsius; dew point -4 degrees Celsius; pressure 29.98 inches of mercury.
Probable cause
The pilots improper decision to fly into known adverse weather, and his failure to maintain airspeed which resulted in an inadvertent stall. A contributing factor was airframe icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA072
- Event ID
- 20030224X00255
- Case number
- CHI03LA072
- 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: 4671143ba659e299c0c6b6f9583abb61b68b9c9086d6bd2e0361efed51602e6c; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:35:27.165Z.