DEN07LA040 · Beech A-36
Beech A-36 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Scott City Municipal Airport (TQK) to Hays Regional Airport (HYS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07LA040
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech A-36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft A-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
- N1801V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scott City Municipal Airport (TQK), Scott City, KSTo Hays Regional Airport (HYS), Hays, KS
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
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 stated he was level in cruise flight at 7,000 feet. He said that approximately 30 miles from his destination, he entered the localizer frequency into his GPS (global positioning system). "The airplane entered an unusual attitude. When [aircraft] control [was] regained, [the] HSI (horizon situation indicator) [was] inaccurate. [I] navigated to GBD with ATC assistance." ATC reported the pilot stated he was in instrument conditions, had become disoriented, advised that he was having a lot of trouble, and "needed to control the aircraft." The pilot then requested "vector/navigational assistance." The controller decided to treat the airplane as an emergency and gave him vectors to a nearby airport where visual weather conditions prevailed. The pilot was cleared for a visual approach at the airport . The airplane landed without further incident. An examination of the airplane showed upward bending of the wing spars of both wings. Flight control continuity was confirmed. An examination of the airplane's systems did not reveal any anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's spatial disorientation and subsequent loss of aircraft control while changing radio frequencies and abruptly applying control forces in excess of the design limits of the airframe.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07LA040
- Event ID
- 20061228X01851
- Case number
- DEN07LA040
- 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 2006-10-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4f8f1ea49f35c44fb6a8c27d92d713276bd5bbeb0807ff8c7a6b777fd7b64602; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:20:57.381Z.