LAX95FA262 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN) to Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX95FA262
- 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-32-300
- 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
- N4108R
- Operator
- Stephen M. Mumford · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN), Grand Canyon, AZTo Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG), AZ
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, attempted
- Pilot in command › Lack of total experience in type operation
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING THE PILOT'S PREFLIGHT WEATHER BRIEFING HE WAS TOLD THAT ICING CONDITIONS WERE FORECAST NEAR HIS ROUTE OF FLIGHT BELOW 16,000 FT, AND HIS ROUTE MAY INVOLVE FLYING BETWEEN TWO FRONTS. THE PILOT FILED FOR AND RECEIVED AN INSTRUMENT CLEARANCE TO FLY AT THE MEA OF 11,000 FT. THE PILOT WAS TOLD THAT SEVERAL INBOUND AIRCRAFT ENCOUNTERED ICING CONDITIONS AT 9,000 FT. THE PILOT TOOK OFF AND, 34 MINUTES LATER, REPORTED HE WAS PICKING UP ICE AND HIS PITOT/STATIC SYSTEM WAS ICED OVER. UNABLE TO CLIMB TO THE MEA, THE PILOT RECEIVED AN APPROACH CLEARANCE FOR A NEARBY AIRPORT. WHILE CRUISING BETWEEN 9,200 & 9,700 FT IN AN AREA WHERE THE MEA WAS 11,000 FT, THE PILOT SAID HE WAS STILL TRYING TO CLIMB AND WAS PICKING UP QUITE A LITTLE BIT OF ICING AND GOT AN OPAQUE WINDSHIELD. THE PILOT REPORTED THAT HE WAS 17.9 MILES OUT FROM THE AIRPORT. IN JULY 1995, THE ACFT WAS LOCATED 14.5 MILES AND 353 DEG FROM THE ARPT. THE LOCATION WAS NOT ON ANY FEDERAL AIRWAY OR ROUTE STRUCTURE ASSOCIATED WITH THE INSTRUMENT APPROACH PROCEDURE. THE PILOT WAS ISSUED AN INSTRUMENT RATING 3 WEEKS PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT FLIGHT.
Probable cause
the pilot's intentional flight into known adverse weather conditions, his misjudged evaluation of the weather, and his inexperience in actual instrument flying.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX95FA262
- Event ID
- 20001206X02614
- Case number
- LAX95FA262
- 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: 3fe5a717ef560e7086a01b63ec8e78a8dc07c1f3ae162225ab350cc73eac19c9; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:56:27.259Z.