LAX04CA179 · Beech 95-A55
Beech 95-A55 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Montague-Yreka Rohrer Field (1O5) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04CA179
- 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 95-A55
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 55
- 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
- N686H
- Operator
- Thomas Fischer
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montague-Yreka Rohrer Field (1O5), Montague, CATo not recorded
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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/mush
- 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 obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, 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 airplane collided with terrain following an in-flight loss of control. The pilot was practicing short field takeoffs and landings on runway 5/23, a turf runway 2,080 feet long. His first landing was on runway 23. He taxied back to he departure end of runway 23 and departed with 20 degrees of flaps. He made a right-hand traffic pattern, and repeated the procedure. The pilot then departed runway 5, starting the departure roll approximately 600 feet from the beginning of the runway. At the intersection of runway 14/32, an asphalt runway, the airplane bounced and became airborne. The airplane climbed to approximately 350 feet agl, and then began turning right. The pilot attempted to correct the right turn with left rudder and aileron. The airplane shuddered and began to stall just prior to impact into an open field. The airplane slid 300 feet before coming to rest. The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions with the airplane prior to the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain an adequate airspeed during the takeoff climb, which led to a stall/mush. Factors to the accident were the uneven intersection of the two runways, and the pilot's failure to use all of the available runway, and the premature liftoff from the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04CA179
- Event ID
- 20040429X00534
- Case number
- LAX04CA179
- 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: 522f1398f457d8fbda726634aeb1c42068e65f52f3a5caea821aa5bfdc78aaae; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:46:27.510Z.