CHI07LA312 · Beech B35
Beech B35 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Waukesha County Airport (UES) to Waterloo Regional Airport (ALO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07LA312
- 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 B35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N55GW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waukesha County Airport (UES), Waukesha, WITo Waterloo Regional Airport (ALO), Waterloo, IA
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, 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 airplane sustained substantial damage when it impacted trees during a night visual approach for landing. The pilot contacted approach control and was told to enter a left base for runway 18, and was cleared for a VFR descent. The airplane was about 8 miles east of the airport. Flight track data indicated that the airplane approached the airport from the east and flew over the approach end of runway 24, and then flew over the control tower. The airplane flew to the southwest and then turned right and paralleled runway 30 to the northwest. The tower controller provided the pilot with a wind check, and the pilot asked if the runway lights were turned on. The pilot reported that he had the runway in sight. The tower controller re-cleared the airplane to land on runway 18. The approach controller reported that the pilot "eventually got on [a] right downwind to RY 18." The approach controller reported that he observed the airplane's red blinking light on a right base for runway 18, but then lost sight of the airplane. The accident site was located about 1.4 miles north of runway 18. The inspection of the accident site revealed that the tops of 40 - 50 foot tall trees about 100 yards northwest of the impact area had broken tree limbs where the airplane impacted the trees. The inspection of the airplane revealed no pre-impact anomalies. A review of the pilot's flight logbook indicated that he had flown 1 hour and 47 minutes of documented night flight since October 20, 1998. The most recent night flight recorded was 47 minutes logged on December 8, 2003. Official sunset on the night of the accident was at 1856.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate clearance from the trees and terrain during a night visual approach for landing. Contributing to the accident were the pilot's lack of recent night flying experience, the night conditions, and the trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07LA312
- Event ID
- 20071009X01531
- Case number
- CHI07LA312
- 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 2007-09-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: da38ba90582490a31389c860d4a81915af27e764ea67000aadf684be328ec868; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:43:33.901Z.