LAX07LA065 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From General William J Fox Airfield (WJF) to Chico Regional Airport (CIC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA065
- 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 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
- N4598S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From General William J Fox Airfield (WJF), Lancaster, CATo Chico Regional Airport (CIC), Chico, 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
- Stall/spin
- 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, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, attempted
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to flight, the pilot checked the weather and also received a weather briefing from a Flight Service Station. The briefing revealed high winds and mountain obscuration along his route of flight. In order to avoid the adverse weather, the pilot departed on a westerly heading and climbed to 12,500 feet rather than his usual altitude of 8,500 feet, on a northwesterly heading across mountainous terrain. Thirty minutes into the flight he encountered strong downdrafts and wind shear on the lee side of the mountains. He applied full power, and initiated a 180-degree turn but was unable to maintain altitude. The airplane descended into a cloud layer, and continued to experience severe turbulence; the airplane subsequently stalled and entered a spin. The pilot recovered from the spin momentarily, before the airplane again stalled and entered a second spin. The airplane then exited the clouds at approximately 500 feet agl. The pilot then force landed the airplane into rising terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation and attempted flight into known adverse weather during cruise, and his failure to maintain an adequate airspeed margin that resulted in a stall/spin. Turbulence was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA065
- Event ID
- 20070214X00190
- Case number
- LAX07LA065
- 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: 9626051ce60504bf2115b6850125aee43c3a966050638b9d51b8cefcd3d905bd; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:52:17.696Z.