LAX04FA078 · Beech A36TC
Beech A36TC · Accident during initial climb
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04FA078
- 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
- 6 · 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 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
- N364JR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), North Las Vegas, NVTo Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP), Bullhead City, AZ
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
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 of the airplane declared an unspecified emergency with the air traffic control tower during his initial climb after takeoff, indicating that he needed to return for landing. A ground witness, a flight instructor, saw the airplane lift off about 1,000 feet down the runway, and watched the nose pitch up quickly to what he described as an "extremely nose high" attitude. He said the airplane began to "mush," and then leveled off. The landing gear was retracted about midfield. The airplane stopped mushing, but it was not gaining much altitude. At the end of the runway, it began turning to the right. During the turn, the nose of the airplane went up again, and the airplane began to mush. About 90 degrees through the turn, the airplane was about 250 feet above ground level, and 75 feet above power lines. About the same time, the left wing went up until the airplane approached a 90-degree angle of bank. The nose went down, and the airplane went straight into the ground. During the entire sequence, the instructor did not see any smoke, fluids, or parts coming from the airplane. The airplane was destroyed in the impact sequence and postcrash fire. No preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures were identified during an examination of the remaining wreckage. The nature of the emergency reported by the pilot was not ascertained.
Probable cause
An in-flight collision with terrain for an undetermined reason while the pilot was maneuvering to return for a landing during an unknown emergency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04FA078
- Event ID
- 20031231X02109
- Case number
- LAX04FA078
- 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: 5b6c4ad71d5e70950272978ec98b0133be421c890cbb4d20e2e4693274dd3972; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:41:11.539Z.