WPR09FA112 · Beech A36
Skyblue USA Beech A36 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Catalina Airport (AVX) to John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09FA112
- 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
- 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
- N66819
- Operator
- Skyblue USA
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Catalina Airport (AVX), Avalon, CATo John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA), Santa Ana, 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 · climb to cruise
- Defining eventThe 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness observed the airplane lift off at midfield, then climb straight ahead and enter the clouds. The witness said that the winds were strong and gusty; it was clear to the north and east. A special aviation routine weather report (METAR) for the departure airport was issued at 1630. It stated that the winds were from 210 degrees at 16 knots gusting to 26 knots; visibility was 6 miles with mist. The skies were 200 feet broken, and 700 feet overcast. The temperature and dew point were both 11 degrees Celsius. The departure airport has a field elevation of 1,602 feet mean sea level; the VORTAC navigational unit is 171 degrees at 1.8 nm from the airport. The elevation of the VORTAC is 2,090 feet. The published instrument flight rules departure procedure from the airport for both runways 4 and 22 was to climb straight ahead to 2,300 feet, and then proceed on course. The pilot filed for direct to the VORTAC, direct to another location and then to the destination airport at 3,000 feet. Recorded radar data indicated the airplane made a 90-degree climbing left turn at 1,800 feet at the departure end of runway 22. Over the next couple of minutes, it turned left, then back toward the original course. It then made a 180-degree right turn, and reached a peak altitude of 2,400 feet. At some points during the maneuvering it was less than 400 feet above ground level. The airplane then began a descending left turn that reached descent rates of 4,000 feet per minute. The last target for the airplane was at an altitude of 1,800 feet and about 1/4 nautical mile (nm) from the accident site. The site was 175 degrees at 1.6 nm from the center of the airport, and was about 1/4 nm northwest of the VORTAC. The wreckage was in hilly terrain, and the airplane appeared to impact the ground in a level upright attitude. The debris path began near the mouth, and on the right side slope, of a canyon; it continued up the canyon toward rapidly rising terrain. The pilot had fewer than 400 hours total time, and fewer than 15 hours actual instrument time. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to follow the published instrument departure procedures during the climb to cruise, and loss of control in instrument meteorological conditions. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s lack of total experience in instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09FA112
- Event ID
- 20090206X45502
- Case number
- WPR09FA112
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-02-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 07005ed3960d6916336099c1d16b21f5aeb2f465d884ceea98b5cbc60e527573; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:56:59.875Z.