SEA08FA045 · Beech A36TC
Beech A36TC · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Idaho Falls Regional Airport (IDA) to St George Regional Airport (SGU)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA08FA045
- 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
- 3 · 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 A36TC
- 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
- N364KW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Idaho Falls Regional Airport (IDA), Idaho Falls, IDTo St George Regional Airport (SGU), ST GEORGE, UT
- 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
- 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
- Flightcrew › VFR flight into imc, continued
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated private pilot seated in the left seat and the airline transport pilot seated in the right seat, were approximately 30 minutes from the intended destination when the single-engine airplane collided with mountainous terrain at the approximate 7,000 foot level. The visual flight rules (VFR) cross-country flight originated in day VFR conditions approximately 2 hours and 10 minutes prior to the accident. Marginal weather conditions, to include snow showers and reduced visibilities, were reported in the area during the time frame of the accident. Search and rescue personnel reported the visibility in the area was poor and the hillside where the wreckage came to rest was not visible from the valley due to clouds. The wreckage was located on up-sloping, snow-covered terrain near the crest of a ridge line. The debris field encompassed an area approximately 570 feet in length along a magnetic heading consistent with the reported route of flight. Ground scars and wreckage signatures were also consistent with controlled flight into terrain. Post accident examination of the airplane wreckage revealed that the landing gear and wing flaps were in the up position (cruise configuration). Additional examination of the wreckage did not disclose evidence of a mechanical malfunction prior to impact. It could not be determined which of the two front seat pilots was manipulating the flight controls when the accident occurred.
Probable cause
The flying pilot's continued flight into instrument meteorological conditions and failure to maintain adequate terrain clearance during cruise. Contributing to the accident were low clouds, reduced visibility and mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA08FA045
- Event ID
- 20071219X01975
- Case number
- SEA08FA045
- 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: 72fbdffc902ac8c4bb1527e0694c3cf6782f0852e856937b3c3fc7388192a31e; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:03:33.733Z.