WPR11FA047 · Beech C35
Beech C35 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) while maneuvering
From Walla Walla Regional Airport (ALW) to Enterprise Municipal Airport (8S4)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11FA047
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Beech C35
- 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
- N747MT
- Operator
- Bruce Cummings
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Walla Walla Regional Airport (ALW), Walla Walla, WATo Enterprise Municipal Airport (8S4), Enterprise, OR
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
The noninstrumented pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight. Family members reported the airplane overdue, and it was located the next day in rough, mountainous terrain near the last radar target that matched the airplane's likely flightpath. The airplane initially impacted trees and then fragmented along the 80-yard-long wreckage distribution path.
Instrument to marginal visual flight rules (VFR) conditions due to low ceilings prevailed around the accident site about the time of the accident. A tribal police officer who was patrolling in the area where the wreckage was located about the time of the accident reported that the weather conditions were windy, rainy, and foggy. The closest weather reporting station to the accident site reported a ceiling overcast about 400 feet above ground level. A series of airmen's meteorological informations were current for the region for instrument flight rules and mountain obscuration conditions. No evidence was found indicating that the pilot received any weather briefings before or during the accident flight; if a briefing from a flight service station had occurred, it likely would not have recommended VFR flight in the area. Data extracted from a handheld GPS onboard the accident airplane revealed that the airplane's flight track included numerous course changes, circles, and altitude changes consistent with a pilot attempting to maintain visual flight in marginal or instrument conditions.
The pilot's toxicology report identified more than one benzodiazepine, including diazepam and nordiazepam, in the blood and liver; however, the levels were low. Therefore, the pilot was likely not impaired from the medication at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The noninstrumented pilot’s inadequate weather planning, which resulted in his failure to maintain visual flight while maneuvering under low ceilings in rainy and foggy conditions and his subsequent failure to maintain clearance from mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11FA047
- Event ID
- 20101115X50550
- Case number
- WPR11FA047
- 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: 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: 6b9882956081db2aa5ee26d3de12bcd7f58cb431ee16ec93db5721f36902e279; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:08:02.573Z.