LAX95FA338 · Swearingen SA-226T
Swearingen SA-226T · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Apple Valley Airport (APV) to Chino Airport (CNO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX95FA338
- 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
- 0 · 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
Swearingen SA-226T
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA-226
- 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
- N693PG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Apple Valley Airport (APV), Apple Valley, CATo Chino Airport (CNO)
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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 › Decision height, below
- Pilot in command › IFR procedure, improper
- Pilot in command › Missed approach, not performed
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During arrival at dawn, the pilot contacted Approach Control about 22 miles from the airport at 8,500 feet and requested an ILS runway 26 approach. The ATIS was reporting 1/8 mile visibility with fog; the minimum published visibility for the ILS landing was 3/4 mile. The controller vectored the aircraft so that it intercepted the ILS localizer at the outer marker at an intercept angle that was 5 degrees greater than the maximum allowable intercept of 30 degrees. The intercept point should have been at least 3 miles further away from the airport. The aircraft was 650 feet above the ILS glideslope at the outer marker (which was outside the ILS glideslope parameter). Instead of making a missed approach, the pilot elected to continue the ILS. As he attempted to intercept the glideslope from above, the airplane entered a high rate of descent and passed through the glideslope. The pilot was arresting the descent, when the airplane collided with level terrain about 1,000 feet short of the runway. After the accident, at 0646 edt, the visibility was 1/16 mile with fog.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper IFR procedure by not initiating a missed approach at the outer marker, by attempting to intercept the glideslope from above after passing the outer marker, and by allowing the airplane to continue descending after reaching the decision height. Factors relating to the accident were: the adverse weather condition, and the approach controller's improper technique in vectoring the airplane onto the ILS localizer.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX95FA338
- Event ID
- 20001207X04513
- Case number
- LAX95FA338
- 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: d4af02bcd4639a788ca079b27142fdfc48a7b653ef061cd3ccc8fb0a9ca7fff7; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:04:17.490Z.