LAX99FA125 · Piper PA-28-161
Aerodrome Aircraft Rental Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From L12 · Redlands, CA to Agua Dulce Airpark (L70)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99FA125
- 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
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-161
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N2529W
- Operator
- Aerodrome Aircraft Rental
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L12 · Redlands, CATo Agua Dulce Airpark (L70), Agua Dulce, 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 · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot and student pilot passenger departed in visual flight conditions for a personal cross-country flight to another airport. The flight was to take them through a mountainous pass that was observed from the flight school office to be obscured in clouds. The flight school operator stated that while fueling the airplane they could see a storm coming and advised the pilot to stay over the highway and to avoid the clouds. He told the pilot if he inadvertently got into the clouds he was to make an immediate 180-degree turn back to where it was clear. A ground witness observed the airplane at the base of the clouds, where it banked left and flew from his view. He subsequently heard an impact noise. The witness relocated his position and was able to see the crash site. He hiked back to his vehicle and called authorities.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertent visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions resulting in impact with high terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99FA125
- Event ID
- 20001205X00335
- Case number
- LAX99FA125
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: ae242850d6fd9743bee389d0df02a5d32f308eb4a03a4684c634732362db42fe; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:12:08.979Z.