LAX96LA296 · Cessna 421C
Cessna 421C · Accident: overrun during landing
From Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO) to Catalina Airport (AVX)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA296
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 421C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N6209V
- Operator
- Sarkis Badzhaksizyan
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO), Santa Monica, CATo Catalina Airport (AVX)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Overrun
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Go-around, not performed
- Pilot in command › Proper touchdown point, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the airport's acting tower manager, the airplane's landing approach 'looked good' but was 'a lot faster than most twin-engine airplanes.' The airplane 'appeared to float,' and it did not touchdown until reaching midfield on the 3,240-foot-long runway. A pilot-witness who was standing on the ramp similarly reported that the airplane's approach speed was fast, and also noted that as the airplane passed midfield its nose wheel had not been lowered to the pavement. The pilot report that after touchdown he applied brakes, and although the airplane slowed he was unable to stop before exiting off the runway's departure end. The airplane went down an embankment, collided with rough terrain, and came to rest approximately 120 feet southwest of the runway's end. The pilot previously had landed at the Santa Monica Municipal Airport. According to the FAA, at Santa Monica the airplane touched down about 1,000 feet prior to the end of that 4,987-foot-long runway. Three months earlier, the pilot received a multiengine class rating. At that time, he indicated his total multiengine flying experience was 23 hours of dual instruction.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to initiate a go-around when a landing overshoot became apparent. Factors which contributed to the accident were: the pilot's excessive airspeed and misjudged distance during landing, his lack of flying experience in the Cessna, and overconfidence in his personal ability.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA296
- Event ID
- 20001208X06545
- Case number
- LAX96LA296
- 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: 61e76b279118d862161a7660e21b4426c9a00a870bf91a8ab13874cc19074a8d; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:35:16.670Z.