LAX96FA226 · Piper PA-32R-300
Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Santa Ynez Airport (IZA) to Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96FA226
- 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-32R-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
- N4303X
- Operator
- E.Madson, L.Colvin, C.Voorhis
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Ynez Airport (IZA), Santa Ynez, CATo Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA)
- 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 initial 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, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Two instrument-rated pilots departed for a planned 24-mile instrument flight. About 5 minutes after takeoff, one of the pilots contacted the radar controller and requested an instrument landing clearance. The controller cleared the pilot for an ILS runway 7 approach to Santa Barbara. When the airplane was about 1 mile west of the final approach fix, it had descended to 1,500 feet. The published glide slope altitude for the fix was 1,774 feet. At 1042, as the airplane was still inbound toward the final approach fix, it reversed course, then it proceeded in a westerly and then a northerly direction. Radar data showed that the airplane then descend through 1,100 feet on a northeasterly heading. A low altitude alert alarm sounded in the ATC control room, and radar contact was lost. (Note: the pilots had not reported any abnormal condition with the airplane or equipment, nor was a safety advisory (alert) transmitted to the airplane.) A witness observed that the airplane came out of clouds in a steep descent and impacted the water at a high rate of speed. He estimated the visibility was 2 miles in fog. Wreckage was recovered, and no mechanical malfunction was found. A review of the pilots' logbooks and airplane utilization records revealed that neither pilot met the FAA instrument flight currency requirements.
Probable cause
failure of the flying pilot to maintain control of the airplane, due to spatial disorientation, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent and collision with the water. Factors relating to the accident were: the lack of recent instrument experience by the flying pilot and the lack of monitoring (and/or remedial action) by the other pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96FA226
- Event ID
- 20001208X06017
- Case number
- LAX96FA226
- 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: 84a52b871ce4f75373110f7884eb7532d5f06844ef39f8f2e37a58d80d9766f2; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:20:38.390Z.