CEN26FA086 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident en route
From Jennings Airport (3R7) to Scholes International At Galveston Airport (GLS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26FA086
- 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
- Ongoing
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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 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
- N5677X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jennings Airport (3R7), Jennings, LATo Scholes International At Galveston Airport (GLS), Galveston, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 33 years (built 1993)
- 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
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On January 8, 2026, about 1431 central standard time, a Beech A36 airplane, N5677X, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Sabine Pass, Texas. The pilot was fatally injured. The airplane was operated under the provisions of Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 as a personal flight. The airplane departed the Jennings Airport (3R7), Jennings, Louisiana, at 1351, and was en route to the Scholes International Airport (GLS), Galveston, Texas, at an altitude of 6,000 ft mean sea level (msl). The pilot had filed an instrument flight rules flight plan and was in radio communications with Houston Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON). At 1430, the pilot was given a clearance to descend to 4,000 ft msl, which was acknowledged by the pilot. ADS-B data showed that about that time, the airplane entered a rain shower followed by a descending right turn before radar contact was lost. A U.S. Coast Guard crew subsequently found the wreckage in a marsh between Salt Lake and Knight Lake following a brief search (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. ADS-B track and wreckage site. The debris field consisted of four main sections which were distributed over an area about 360 ft long and 160 ft wide. The first section included the left wing and aileron that had fractured at the wing root. The second section included the outboard right wing separated near the mid spar and the right pilot’s seat. The third section included the propeller, engine, cowling, and cockpit instrumentation which were submerged in the marshy terrain. The final section included the aft cabin and empennage (see Figure 2). Smaller portions of doors, insulation, and aileron were located between the major wreckage areas. There was no evidence of fire. The flaps appeared to be in the retracted position.
Figure 2. Accident site wreckage locations. The airplane was retained for further examination. A preliminary review of weather information revealed rain showers were present in the airplane’s route of flight when the right descending turn began (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Weather radar information for 1430 CST - rain shower annotated in the circle.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26FA086
- Event ID
- 20260109202276
- Case number
- CEN26FA086
- 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, coordinates. 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: 434c2abea41240600b440a13988279d5ed4edbcc3afb0615ba94299d7ae2e586; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:12:29.727Z.