LAX99FA138 · Piper PA-32R-301
Piper PA-32R-301 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT) to McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99FA138
- 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
- 4 · 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-32R-301
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N9254Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT), Deer Valley, AZTo McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, 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
- 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
- Flight control, stabilator › Overload
- Flight control, stabilator › Separation
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, attempted
- Pilot in command › Weather forecast, disregarded
- Weather condition › Mountain wave
- Wing › Overload
- Wing › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted terrain following an uncontrolled descent. The horizontal stabilator and the left wing separated while the airplane was in a descending right turn on the downwind side of a mountain. The pilot received a full preflight weather briefing and updated that with an abbreviated briefing prior to takeoff. The briefings included a forecast for moderate to severe turbulence and icing along the route of flight. While en route, the pilot experienced icing conditions and requested a lower altitude. He received pilot reports while en route that indicated icing conditions were being encountered in the area of his destination. The airplane was not equipped with anti-icing or deicing equipment. A Safety Board weather study identified conditions that were conducive for clouds, turbulence, wind shear, icing, and mountain wave activity.
Probable cause
The pilot disregarded his weather briefing and attempted flight into areas of forecast and reported icing and moderate to severe turbulence. The airplane encountered mountain wave activity resulting in an overload condition and in-flight separation of the left wing and stabilator. Mountainous terrain, icing conditions, and turbulence were factors in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99FA138
- Event ID
- 20001205X00486
- Case number
- LAX99FA138
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-04-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8d48c92e87e247915315f12111143bb9ab1a8637800522ea9370d721eedd67c8; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:10:07.949Z.