LAX97FA148 · Cessna 152
Fallon Airmotive Cessna 152 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL) to Fallon Municipal Airport (FLX)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97FA148
- 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
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
- N64845
- Operator
- Fallon Airmotive
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL), CATo Fallon Municipal Airport (FLX), Fallon, NV
- 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 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
- Flight instructor(on ground) › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
- Flight instructor(on ground) › Supervision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR procedures, not followed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of South Lake Tahoe, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was on an authorized round-robin cross-country flight with several intermediate landings. He had made 1 landing at the first airport, and 3 landings at the second airport, having a density altitude of about 6,700 feet. He then took off but did not follow the published (recommended) departure procedures for gaining altitude. He did, however, proceed along his flight plan route directly toward the next authorized landing site. The route was over terrain which required the airplane to climb at a rate which exceeded its published maximum performance. After climbing about 4 minutes the airplane collided with trees and impacted the snow covered mountainside about 7,840 feet msl. The CFI reported that he had personally authorized his student to make the flight, but told him to change the route from what the student had initially selected (accident route) to one over lower terrain. The CFI had not flown with the student in 3 months nor had he provided dual cross-country training in nearly 6 months. Also, the CFI had not provided his student with high density altitude flight training in the geographical area flown. Prior to the student's departure, the CFI had not reviewed with him the latest forecast weather conditions or ensured that the pencil line depicting the route of flight was drawn away from the higher elevation mountainous terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's collision with mountainous terrain due to his failure to follow published high density altitude departure procedures during climb out, and route selection which exceeded the airplane's maximum climb performance specifications. Also causal was the CFI's inadequate flight supervision and improper approval of his student's preflight preparation and route selection. Factors were: the pilot's inadequate preflight planning, his lack of high density altitude training for the area flown, and the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97FA148
- Event ID
- 20001208X07735
- Case number
- LAX97FA148
- 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: 81b6c5c12602b33a5c9516f304c5e0bc6ddd3f99ffe67cb53d379b3acda5d2fc; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:00:15.767Z.