LAX97LA062 · Cessna 182M
Benbow Aviation Cessna 182M · Accident: overrun during landing
From Zamperini Field (TOA) to Fallbrook Community Airpark (L18)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA062
- 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 182M
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N70967
- Operator
- Benbow Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Zamperini Field (TOA), Torrance, CATo Fallbrook Community Airpark (L18)
- 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 › Distance/speed, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Fallbrook, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that after going around from his first landing attempt on the 2,160-foot-long runway because his airspeed was too high on short final, he then remained in the traffic pattern to make another landing attempt. He reported that on his subsequent landing attempt, he was again high and reduced the power to idle. The aircraft then developed a high sink rate with a slow airspeed and the pilot added power. The pilot was unable to stop the aircraft on the remaining runway and the aircraft overran the pavement end, proceeded down a hill, and collided with a ditch. The closest official aviation weather reporting station noted winds from 310 degrees at 6 knots. Based upon this weather report, the aircraft had a computed 4-knot tailwind during the attempted landing on runway 18. Airport personnel reported in a telephone interview that the windsock was 'faded but not torn' on the night the accident occurred. Further, they stated that at night the wind sock is lighted; however, the free moving tetrahedron is not lighted, even when the pilot controlled runway lighting is activated.
Probable cause
the pilot's selection of a runway with a tailwind component and his maintaining an excessive airspeed on final approach, which resulted in a late touchdown and a high ground speed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA062
- Event ID
- 20001208X07084
- Case number
- LAX97LA062
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-11-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0aa581dfe9973d75f535b75b87bc893cb27a7bedce03922216cd44044c5dbbdb; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:42:59.557Z.