LAX94FA157 · Piper PA-32R-301T PA-32R-301
Piper PA-32R-301T PA-32R-301 · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Sacramento Executive Airport (SAC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94FA157
- 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
- 3 · 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-301T 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
- N3562C
- Operator
- Ian J. Kirson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sacramento Executive Airport (SAC), Sacramento, CATo not recorded
- 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 collision with object
- 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
- Wire, transmission; 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 › Altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and his passengers departed for an evening dinner flight to another town about 48 miles away. The pilot requested VFR advisories en route, but did not request MSAW monitoring. The initially selected cruise altitude was 2,500 feet msl. He requested a heading to his destination, which was provided by approach control. About 3 minutes later, he was told his destination airport was at 12 o'clock and 8 miles, which he acknowledged. About 1 minute later, radio and radar contact was lost and an ELT signal was received by the local center. According to radar data, during the last 6 minutes of flight the airplane descended from 1,800 feet msl to 1,300 feet with no altitude for the last five radar hits. The airplane collided with a power line on a ridge line at 1,300 feet msl, about 6 miles from the destination airport. The pilot had received an abbreviated weather briefing for the dark night flight. Witnesses reported that stratus clouds were obscuring the ridge line at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's selection of an en route descent altitude profile inadequate to clear all terrain along his intended flight path, and, his inadvertent VFR flight into IMC conditions. Factors in the accident were the dark night lighting conditions and the obscured ridge line.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94FA157
- Event ID
- 20001206X00916
- Case number
- LAX94FA157
- 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 1994-03-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0dfb38d818ebf3fee6f9c097282807e8e4e2cf332cb001f9b0c3c6869e85a75c; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:13:39.813Z.