LAX95LA179 · Cessna 152
Tradewinds Aviation Cessna 152 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water
From Oceanside Municipal Airport (OCN) to Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX95LA179
- 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
- 1 · 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 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
- N49058
- Operator
- Tradewinds Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oceanside Municipal Airport (OCN), Oceanside, CATo Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA), Santa Barbara, 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
- Unknown
- 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
- 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
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, initiated
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT RECEIVED A WEATHER BRIEFING BEFORE DEPARTING ON THE ACCIDENT FLIGHT. THE WEATHER BRIEFER TOLD THE PILOT THAT VFR FLIGHT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED DUE TO LOW CEILINGS AND FREEZING LEVEL ABOVE 4,000 FEET. THE PILOT TOLD THE BRIEFER THAT HE WOULD FLY LOW OVER THE OCEAN PARALLELING THE COAST LINE. THE PILOT DID NOT FILE A VFR FLIGHT PLAN. THE AIRPLANE WAS REPORTED MISSING 3 DAYS AFTER IT DEPARTED ON THE ACCIDENT FLIGHT. THE RADAR DATA SHOWED THE FLIGHT INITIALLY CLIMBING TO 1,000 FEET AND THEN DESCEND TO 300 FEET. THE LAST RADAR DATA SHOWED THE AIRPLANE AT 600 FEET OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN WHEN WHEN IT DISAPPEARED FROM RADAR. THE PILOT DID NOT COMMUNICATE WITH ANY AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL FACILITIES DURING THE FLIGHT. A WEATHER STUDY SHOWED THAT LOW CLOUDS AND LOW VISIBILITY WITH FOG EXISTED AT THE TIME THE AIRPLANE DISAPPEARED. THE AIRPLANE WAS NOT FOUND.
Probable cause
that the pilot initiated the flight into known adverse weather, and inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX95LA179
- Event ID
- 20001207X03329
- Case number
- LAX95LA179
- 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: 4d788bbb60e0155fefc0ccf7ad091cd406422bd4c0544548b93f6361dfe689d5; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:47:52.369Z.