LAX94FA171 · Cessna 206
Action Medical Service Cessna 206 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Polacca Airport (P10) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94FA171
- 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
Cessna 206
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N5222U
- Operator
- Action Medical Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Polacca Airport (P10), Chandler, AZTo 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 terrain/water
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE FLIGHT DEPARTED ON A PERSONAL VFR CROSS-COUNTRY NIGHT FLIGHT TOWARD MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN. THE PILOT RECEIVED A WEATHER BRIEFING THAT INDICATED VFR WAS NOT RECOMMENDED. THE DESTINATION WEATHER CONDITIONS CONSISTED OF RAIN, LOW CEILINGS AND LOW VISIBILITY, ICING CONDITIONS, AND MOUNTAIN OBSCURATION. THE PILOT DEPARTED ABOUT 1 1/2 HOURS AFTER THE BRIEFING AND DID NOT ARRIVE AT THE DESTINATION. AFTER BEING REPORTED OVERDUE, THE AIRCRAFT WAS LOCATED 2 DAYS LATER ABOUT 9 MILES EAST OF THE DESTINATION AIRPORT. THE PILOT WAS NOT INSTRUMENT CURRENT AND THE AIRCRAFT WAS NOT CERTIFICATED FOR INSTRUMENT FLIGHT.
Probable cause
the pilot's intentional VFR flight into known adverse IMC weather conditions. Inadequate preflight planning, dark night operations, and weather conditions that included low ceilings and mountain obscuration were factors in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94FA171
- Event ID
- 20001206X00919
- Case number
- LAX94FA171
- 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 1994-03-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9f8a5b164f7ca74fcb8ce73a3344a1314675879d8ad856d341fdca8272079cfc; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:12:47.922Z.