LAX97LA303 · Fleming GLASSAIR III GLASSAIR I
Fleming GLASSAIR III GLASSAIR I · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From 106 · DUNSMUIR-MOTT, CA to Palm Springs International Airport (PSP)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA303
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Fleming GLASSAIR III GLASSAIR I
- Aircraft type
- Fleming GLASSAIR
- 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
- N77DF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 106 · DUNSMUIR-MOTT, CATo Palm Springs International Airport (PSP), Palm Springs, 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 · climb to 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, initiated
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated pilot departed before daylight in mountainous terrain under an overcast sky. The pilot did not file a flight plan nor obtain a formal weather briefing. When he failed to arrive at his destination a search was initiated. The aircraft was located 9 months later, about 4.5 miles south of the departure point in mountainous terrain. According to a sheriff's investigator, the engine was buried below the ground surface and the airplane was very fragmented.
Probable cause
was the pilot's intentional flight into marginal meteorological conditions in mountainous terrain during dark nighttime conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA303
- Event ID
- 20001208X07086
- Case number
- LAX97LA303
- 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: 5a54a2e007aedc37a8810fa18067d1b5dee683302555e5db7d66d363d6cfe2ac; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:07:43.870Z.