ATL07FA040 · Beech A36
Blue Heron Aviation Sales Beech A36 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX) to Anderson Regional Airport (AND)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07FA040
- 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
- 4 · 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
- N506BC
- Operator
- Blue Heron Aviation Sales
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX), Titusville, FLTo Anderson Regional Airport (AND), Anderson, SC
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument-rated private pilot filed an instrument-flight-rules flight plan and advised the controller that he was operating under visual-flight-rules flight at 9,500 feet. The controller cleared the pilot to descend and maintain 9,000 feet. Shortly thereafter, the pilot requested clearance to climb to 11,000 feet. The controller advised the pilot that there were reports of icing between 12,000 and 16,000 feet. The pilot advised that he would be "on top of it." The pilot requested clearance to climb to 13,000 feet. Shortly thereafter, the pilot advised he was "experiencing some precipitation" and requested clearance to descend to 11,000 feet. Analysis conducted by Safety Board meteorology specialists indicates that the airplane likely encountered freezing rain or drizzle that would have resulted in moderate to severe mixed icing adhering to its airframe. As the airplane descended in a right turn, it disappeared from radar. The airplane broke up in flight and impacted heavily wooded terrain. Marijuana was found at the scene, and post-accident toxicological testing performed on specimens from the pilot was consistent with the use of marijuana within 3 hours of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control resulting in the in-flight breakup of the airplane due to aerodynamic overload. Contributing to the accident were airframe icing and the pilot's impairment by illegal drugs.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07FA040
- Event ID
- 20070215X00194
- Case number
- ATL07FA040
- 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. 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: 3313d1ea1059688a9d8838aff0d198ad57aedf6fee8b1326ff7485993a82cf90; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:51:31.535Z.