LAX06FA233 · Bellanca 14-19
Bellanca 14-19 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Colusa County Airport (O08) to California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport (KACV)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06FA233
- 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
- 1 · 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
Bellanca 14-19
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 14
- 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
- N522A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Colusa County Airport (O08), Colusa, CATo California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport (KACV), Arcata Airport, 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
- Approach · IFR initial 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 collision with object
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Atc clearance, not complied with
- Pilot in command › IFR procedure, not followed
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, not maintained
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 was receiving flight following from air traffic control (ATC). While en route to the destination airport, the weather deteriorated to instrument flight rules conditions. He requested the instrument landing system (ILS) approach. ATC cleared him for a procedure turn to the ILS approach course, and to cross the initial approach fix (IAF) at or above 5,200 feet. The runway threshold was 316 degrees at 14.7 miles from the IAF. Recorded radar data indicated that the airplane began descending prior to reaching the IAF; the airplane was 800 feet low while still 1 mile from it. The airplane continued descending until colliding with trees. It was on the approximate localizer approach path, but the debris path was on a heading about 90 degrees off the approach course. The airplane's last reported Mode C altitude was 1,600 feet mean seal level (msl). The wreckage was about 11 nautical miles from the runway at an elevation of about 1,735 feet. The glide slope altitude was 1,753 feet at the outer marker (OM), which was 4.6 nm from the runway threshold.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow the prescribed instrument approach procedure and to maintain the proper glide slope and altitude/clearance from obstacles while on an instrument landing system approach, resulting in a collision with trees. Contributing to the accident was the dark night lighting conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06FA233
- Event ID
- 20060727X01028
- Case number
- LAX06FA233
- 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 2006-07-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 69ded15843d8fa479a468488a3b8ea78f46b2083ca688652e022b597a0c437d4; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:09:37.849Z.