CEN10FA392 · Beech 35C33
Beech 35C33 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Stephenville Clark Regional Airport (SEP) to Arlington Municipal Airport (GKY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10FA392
- 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 35C33
- 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
- N5827S
- Operator
- Casey Brinegar
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stephenville Clark Regional Airport (SEP), Stephenville, TXTo Arlington Municipal Airport (GKY), Arlington, TX
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and the two passengers departed on a cross country flight on a dark, moonless night over a rural area. Approximately 10 minutes after they departed, the airplane was observed in a descending spiral over a hay field. The last 50 seconds of recorded GPS data and the witness's description of the maneuvers before the crash, were consistent with the pilot experiencing a vestibular illusion, which resulted in a spiral from which he was unable to recover. Although toxicology testing detected very low levels of a marijuana metabolite in the blood, it was consistent only with use of the substance in the days or weeks preceding the accident, and not suggestive of impairment at the time of the accident. A postaccident examination of the airplane and the engine revealed no preimpact mechanical deficiencies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane while maneuvering at night over a rural area, due to spatial disorientation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10FA392
- Event ID
- 20100714X15637
- Case number
- CEN10FA392
- 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 2010-07-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5b3b567ffbfe65f0e5875e22fcef47566ee99978a717d347181d089684973c2d; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:57:00.156Z.