LAX97FA044 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Columbia Airport (O22) to Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97FA044
- 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
- 1 · 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N48737
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Airport (O22), Columbia, CATo Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, 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
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
No record was found of the pilot obtaining a preflight or in-flight weather briefing. An AIRMET valid during the period of the flight forecasted mountain obscuration and IFR conditions in the accident area. The instrument rated pilot flew a visual flight rules (VFR) cross-country flight over mountainous terrain in marginal weather conditions. The aircraft collided with a coastal mountain ridge at the 1,940 foot level; the coastal mountain range was the last terrain feature before the pilot's destination. Review of the pilot's logbook revealed he lacked the recency of experience to fly in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) under instrument flight rules (IFR). The accident site was obscured by low ceilings during the accident time and subsequently impeded search and rescue operations. Toxicology tests of the pilot's blood and urine detected theophylline (a drug commonly used to treat asthma) at levels of 2.2 mcg/ml and 22.5 mcg/ml, respectively. Also, undetermined levels of ephedrine and phenylopropanolamine (over-th-counter decongestants) were detected in his blood and urine, and an undetermined level of hydrochlorothiazide (a drug commonly used to treat high blood pressure) was detected in his blood.
Probable cause
flight by the pilot into into adverse weather conditions, and his failure to maintain altitude or clearance from mountainous terrain. The adverse weather and terrain conditions were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97FA044
- Event ID
- 20001208X07055
- Case number
- LAX97FA044
- 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: 7c823a91bf6a906d05b5e236ac1dd8d02d832dee1ac71eb6c0a38c2e89a6092b; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:07:17.013Z.