LAX96FA094 · Cessna 150
Buchanan Flying Club Cessna 150 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Napa County Airport (APC) to Buchanan Field (CCR)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96FA094
- 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 150
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 150
- 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
- N18106
- Operator
- Buchanan Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Napa County Airport (APC), Napa, CATo Buchanan Field (CCR), Concord, 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
- 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
- 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, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated pilot had departed Napa about 0200 for a return flight to Concord (Buchanan Field). At 0235 the pilot contacted Travis AFB approach control stating he was unable to land at Buchanan Field due to weather, and requested radar vectors to the Rio Vista airport 12 miles east of Travis AFB. The pilot was vectored to Rio Vista but was unable to see the airport. He was informed that most of the airports in the area were fogged in. Air traffic control then vectored the pilot to Sacramento to intercept a localizer final approach course. The pilot was unable to track the localizer and received corrective vectors on final. The pilot missed the airport where the visibility was below minimums due to the fog; however, the pilot reported seeing lights when flying over the airport. ATC then coordinated a radar approach to Travis AFB which was also below minimums due to fog. The pilot accepted a vector to final approach course for the radar guided instrument approach procedure. He followed the radar controller's guidance and reported seeing the runway lights, but was unable to land on the 10,995-foot-long runway. The pilot turned the airplane to the right while trying to maintain visual contact with the runway lights. The airplane collided with level terrain while turning back towards the airport about 1/2 mile from the runway. The accident occurred 25 minutes after the pilot reported to air traffic control he had only 15 minutes of fuel left. Less than 3 gallons of fuel were found on the airplane at the accident site. The pilot tested positive for amphetamine, carbamazepine (antiseizure medication), and fluoxetine (Prozac - an antidepressant) at very high levels.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued flight into known adverse weather conditions which eventually led to a loss of control due to spatial disorientation. Factors in the accident were: the pilot's inadequate preflight planning, his impairment due to medication, the foggy weather conditions below weather minimums, and the dark night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96FA094
- Event ID
- 20001208X05152
- Case number
- LAX96FA094
- 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: 49187070b9bc7b6ad93087f16391ac9ffb7411de41065136df3f7339a64c626c; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:27:47.418Z.