LAX05FA034 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT) to HII · Lake Havasu, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05FA034
- 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
- 2 · 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 A36
- 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
- N6111C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT), El Monte, CATo HII · Lake Havasu, 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
- En route · 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)
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft collided with hilly desert terrain 8 miles west of the destination airport after encountering instrument meteorological conditions. The pilot did not hold an instrument rating. Radar information was obtained, tracking the departing airplane's target at a takeoff time of 1703:34 from El Monte, California. The recorded route of flight of the eastbound target continued up to the last radar return at 1832:31, at a Mode C altitude of 8,300 feet mean sea level (msl) (7,000 feet above ground level (agl)). The highly fragmented and burned wreckage was found about 1/2-mile west of the last recorded radar position spread out over a 130-foot-long debris field on a magnetic heading of 160 degrees. According to the Unicom operator, about 1815, a light rain storm with some lightning passed through the airport traffic area, moving approximately southeast to northwest (toward the accident site), and clearing about 1825. About 1821, an unidentified aircraft called the Unicom operator and the pilot asked about the weather. The operator provided the weather from the Automated Weather Observation System (AWOS) monitor screen, and asked the pilot where the aircraft was coming from. The pilot responded "L.A. area, 35 out at 8,500," and reported that he could see Bullhead City, Arizona, off his left wing. The pilot asked for the runway in use, and the operator gave "32 left traffic." About 1825 to 1827, a call came over the Unicom radio stating "Hey Unicom I'm in trouble." There were no responses to several calls from the Unicom operator. At 1815 , the AWOS was reporting 3,000 feet scattered, 4,000 broken, and 11,000 overcast. The wind was 330 degrees at 12 knots gusting to 23 knots. Using radar, satellite imagery, and upper air soundings, a meteorological analysis found that visual conditions generally existed along the airplane's route of flight until the immediate area of the accident site where merging cloud layers were present, with bases at 300 feet agl and tops to 22,000 feet. Light rain showers likely existed at the accident site.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions leading to spatial disorientation and an in-flight loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05FA034
- Event ID
- 20041122X01851
- Case number
- LAX05FA034
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-11-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e3b0f99528b1bf178fff627dcf1b62e239713d333b3bfe89d33fd79ec0ba8c58; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:12:03.495Z.