LAX97FA003 · Cessna 172RG
Cessna 172RG · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during initial climb
From Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN) to Page Municipal Airport (PGA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97FA003
- 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
- 4 · 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 172RG
- 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
- N6267R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN)To Page Municipal Airport (PGA), Page, AZ
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The recently certificated private pilot ordered that the aircraft be fueled to capacity, which resulted in it being about 90 pounds over its maximum certificated gross weight for takeoff. The aircraft departed the mountain airport at 8,100 foot density altitude, and it climbed toward gradually rising terrain. The pilot radioed that he was unable to climb. The pilot of another aircraft observed the accident aircraft fly approximately 5 miles at treetop level with the wings rocking and that it was in a nose high attitude before impacting treetops and crashing. The aircraft had climbed approximately 400 feet from the runway to the accident site. No evidence of a mechanical discrepancy was found.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate preflight planning and preparation, which resulted in an inability to outclimb rising/wooded terrain after takeoff. Factors relating to the accident were: failure of the pilot to ensure that the aircraft's gross weight was not exceed for takeoff, high density altitude, the pilot's lack of experience in high density altitude operations, and the rising/mountainous terrain condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97FA003
- Event ID
- 20001208X06910
- Case number
- LAX97FA003
- 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: 9887be9392cbb80ac9e259ecdd11f6bbcd694b1afeb9b417b2045683c989d421; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:10:38.790Z.