LAX03FA182 · Beech A36TC
Beech A36TC · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO) to Harry Reid International Airport (LAS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03FA182
- 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
- 5 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 1
- 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 A36TC
- 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
- N1856P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO), Santa Monica, CATo Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, 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
- En route · climb to 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); 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 › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, attempted
- Pilot in command › Weather forecast, disregarded
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the en route climb-out, the airplane entered the base of an overcast cloud layer, and then descended out of the clouds in a spinning, steep nose down attitude that continued to impact with a 3-story apartment building. A post-impact fire destroyed the airplane. Earlier that day, the pilot received three weather briefings from the FSS. Each briefer indicated that AIRMETS were in effect for IFR conditions and mountain obscuration, and advised the pilot to call back after 1300 for updated weather. During the second briefing, the briefer stated that VFR flight was not recommended. On the last briefing, the briefer indicated that the weather conditions were marginal towards the east with at least 3 miles visibility. The pilot inquired if he could legally fly, to which the briefer replied that yes, he was legal to fly, but that the weather conditions were marginal. After takeoff, the pilot asked the controller if he knew if the weather was clearing towards the east. The controller stated that it was not clear towards the east. The pilot then said that he was going to fly towards the east, and find a break or hole in the clouds to "pop up through." Controllers received no further transmissions from the pilot on any frequency. Cloud bases in the area for a 12-hour period ranged from 2,200 feet to 3,100 feet overcast, with tops ranging from 3,800 feet to 4,000 feet agl. The pilot did not hold an instrument rating. The pilot and passengers had been at the airport for at least 8 hours waiting for weather conditions to clear. One passenger was going to be dropped off at Las Vegas, and the pilot and remaining two remaining passengers were going to continue to Sun Valley, Idaho. Post accident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot's in-flight loss of control due to spatial disorientation, and failure to maintain airspeed, which resulted in a stall/spin. Also causal was the pilot's disregard of the weather information provided and his attempt to continue VFR flight into IMC. A factor in the accident was the pilot's self-induced pressure to complete the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03FA182
- Event ID
- 20030630X00971
- Case number
- LAX03FA182
- 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: 5c2ae5276b86eb2f04b5e194089da7e0056f73d2d31bdf1cfde3a678176b406e; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:11:50.109Z.