LAX94LA261 · Cessna 152
West Valley Flying Club Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From an unrecorded airport to Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94LA261
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N761GZ
- Operator
- West Valley Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, 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 · climb to 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT AND PASSENGER DEPARTED A COASTAL AIRPORT AS THE RETURN PORTION OF A NIGHT CROSS-COUNTRY FLIGHT. THE DEPARTURE ROUTE PLACED THE AIRPLANE OVER AN OCEAN BAY. WEATHER CONDITIONS WERE REPORTED AS AN 800 TO 1,000 FOOT OVERCAST. WITNESSES HEARD THE AIRCRAFT'S ENGINE AND THEN OBSERVED THE AIRPLANE DESCENDING FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE OVERCAST IN A SPIN. THE AIRPLANE STRUCK THE WATER IN A NEAR-VERTICAL NOSE-DOWN ATTITUDE. A SEARCH FOR THE AIRCRAFT ONLY LOCATED FLOATING DEBRIS. SEVERAL SUBSEQUENT SEARCHES HAVE NOT LOCATED THE AIRCRAFT. THE OCCUPANTS INITIALLY WERE NOT RECOVERED. THE PILOT'S BODY WAS RECOVERED 1 MONTH AFTER THE ACCIDENT. THE PASSENGER HAS NOT BEEN LOCATED.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S LOSS OF AIRCRAFT CONTROL DUE TO SPATIAL DISORIENTATION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94LA261
- Event ID
- 20001206X01577
- Case number
- LAX94LA261
- 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 1994-06-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: cf98612a6a15145cb66d13e42e052451767a8db19777542bb17e77d3d8b6a022; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:06:35.409Z.