LAX96FA121 · Cessna 172D
Cessna 172D · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From P06 · Bullhead City, AZ to Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96FA121
- 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
- 3 · 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 172D
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N2598U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From P06 · Bullhead City, AZTo Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM), San Diego, 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 · 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
- 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); Stall/spin
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument rated pilot departed VFR. Instrument meteorological conditions were forecasted over the mountainous area near the destination airport. The pilot did not contact any FAA air traffic or FSS along the route of flight. The forecasted winds aloft show that the pilot would encounter between 40 and 50 knots headwind. Two AIRMETS for the accident area were issued by the National Weather Service. One AIRMET shows that the mountain ranges would be obscured with low clouds and fog; the other AIRMET reported moderate turbulence in the area. Radar data showed an airplane proceeding along the pilot's estimated route of flight. The last target was observed about 10 miles west of the crash site. The airplane crashed in a near vertical nose and right wing down attitude while in a right turn spin.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin. The pilot's inadequate preflight/preparation, low clouds, fog, and mountain obscuration were factors in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96FA121
- Event ID
- 20001208X05277
- Case number
- LAX96FA121
- 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: dc67209b78462e0454ba5b1810b3ea4a43b4ea6425c70b2d60f3703ed007eea3; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:25:08.493Z.