NYC08LA008 · Beech D55
Beech D55 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Cyril E. King Airport (TIST) to Henry E. Rohlsen Airport (TISX)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08LA008
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech D55
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 55
- 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
- N100UC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cyril E. King Airport (TIST), St. ThomasTo Henry E. Rohlsen Airport (TISX), St. Croix
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated pilot called a friend on St. Thomas and asked if he had a flight to St. Croix that day, and if he could he bring back a family member for him. The friend advised it would be no problem. Later, the pilot called again and stated, "I can see St. Croix from my house," so that he would fly to St. Croix and get the family member himself. The friend became concerned as the weather was "real bad" near St. Croix. The pilot departed St. Thomas and received VFR flight following. The controller asked if he was able to go through the weather. The pilot responded that he did not have any weather where he was, that there was some lightning around him, but that everything seemed "pretty good." The flight was handed off to St. Croix tower. The tower controller asked what his position was, and the pilot responded, "Roger we are level at (unintelligible) oh boy we're having some prob." This was the last transmission received. Analysis of the weather revealed level 5 thunderstorms were present in vicinity of St. Croix. The pilot probably encountered moderate-heavy rain in the minutes before the accident. However, the pilot was likely in light-moderate precipitation when the airplane was lost from radar. Multiple cloud layers existed at and below 3,000 feet. After the accident the weather observation showed winds with gusts to 17 knots. The sun had set, and twilight had ended prior to the accident. Considering the weather data, and lack of ambient light, there would have been no visible horizon, forcing the pilot to control the airplane solely by referencing the flight instruments The Airplane Flying Handbook states that "unless a pilot has many hours of training in instrument flight, flight in reduced visibility or at night when the horizon is not visible should be avoided.
Probable cause
The non-instrument rated pilot's decision to continue VFR flight into IMC conditions subsequently leading to a loss of control. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of instrument experience, the weather conditions, and the night lighting conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08LA008
- Event ID
- 20071025X01653
- Case number
- NYC08LA008
- 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: 85c15f28a25fdaed6e6718d71df953cb29eb7afb9f46cae49f851b7c831fabdf; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:12:34.448Z.