WPR16FA007 · Beech G35
Beech G35 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16FA007
- 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
- 2 · 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 G35
- 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
- N4485D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL), South Lake Tahoe, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1956)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot and passenger were departing on a personal cross-country flight. During takeoff, witnesses observed that the airplane was struggling to gain altitude and noted that the engine sounded as if it was not producing adequate power. They added that, as the airplane crossed over the airport boundaries, it climbed to about 100 ft above ground level in an excessively high pitch-up attitude. Shortly thereafter, the airplane crossed a ridgeline, entered a nose- and left-wing-low attitude, and impacted the backyard of a residence.
While ceiling and visibility were not an issue in this accident, the wind magnitude and changes in wind direction likely affected the flight. Wind gusts were as high as 26 knots around the accident time, and weather observation sites within 3 miles of the accident site all reported large changes in wind direction around the accident time. Although the wind was mainly from the south to southwest, there were times when the wind came from the west and north. This change in wind direction was likely due to mountain wave conditions and wind flow over the mountainous terrain, and these changes in wind direction and gusts likely affected the accident flight and the pilot's ability to control the airplane.
Wreckage and impact signatures were consistent with a left-wing-low and nose-low impact. Postaccident examination of the airframe, flight control system, and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Based on the witness observations and the recorded weather data, it is likely that the airplane encountered a downdraft that exceeded the airplane's climb performance, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle-of-attack and a subsequent aerodynamic stall.
An area forecast, issued about 5 hours before the accident, forecasted southwest wind at 20 knots with gusts to 30 knots for the time surrounding the accident. A terminal aerodrome forecast issued 1 hour before the accident, forecasted wind from 190 degrees at 11 knots gusting to 20 knots. However, there is no evidence that the pilot obtained weather information before the flight, thus he may not have been aware of the gusting wind conditions that affected the flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain airplane control due to an encounter with a downdraft that exceeded the airplane’s climb performance capabilities and resulted in an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to depart without obtaining a weather briefing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16FA007
- Event ID
- 20151011X04515
- Case number
- WPR16FA007
- 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 2015-10-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9b7f7acadc8d117b8881420a6b7b5eec214e868d0985488ec9fe522598b63472; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:32:27.858Z.