LAX97LA071 · Farhat RV6A
Farhat RV6A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP) to Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA071
- 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
- 2 · 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
Farhat RV6A
- Aircraft type
- Farhat RV6
- 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
- N961CP
- Operator
- Jerry L. Farhat · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP), Bullhead City, AZTo Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF), San Diego, 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
- Miscellaneous, airframe › Ice
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot received a full preflight weather briefing and an update briefing before takeoff. The briefings included information from a SIGMET and 3 AIRMETS, forecasting moderate to severe turbulence and icing along his route of flight. The conditions were expected to improve overnight; however, the pilot elected to depart that day. While en route, he reported icing conditions and requested a lower altitude. Shortly after receiving clearance to a lower altitude, the pilot reported being unable to hold the new altitude. He was asked if he could maintain terrain obstruction clearance, but he replied that he was in clouds. The pilot was then asked to try to maintain the minimum vectoring altitude (MVA) and to fly a heading that would keep him in that sector. The pilot was assigned a new heading and reminded of the MVA, but his responses were unintelligible. Contact with the pilot was lost. Subsequently, the aircraft impacted terrain at an elevation of about 4,600 ft. Wreckage was scattered over a distance of about 150 ft. An NTSB weather study identified conditions that were conducive for clouds, turbulence, windshear, and icing. The aircraft was not equipped with anti-icing or deicing equipment.
Probable cause
flight by the pilot into known adverse weather conditions, which resulted in the accumulation of airframe ice and an inability to maintain clearance (proper altitude) from mountainous terrain. Moderate to severe icing conditions in clouds, turbulence, and mountainous terrain were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA071
- Event ID
- 20001208X07190
- Case number
- LAX97LA071
- 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: 0db2b61b5eb21047178ea5063cf6f2e737d20e6fe3478ef9426085505de96dda; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:04:56.036Z.