LAX97FA202 · Cessna 206
Cessna 206 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH) to Hollywood Burbank/Bob Hope Airport (BUR)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97FA202
- 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 206
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N756PU
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH), Mammoth Lakes, CATo Hollywood Burbank/Bob Hope Airport (BUR), Burbank, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot told air traffic control (ATC) that he was over a hole in the clouds and planned to descend through it en route to his destination. ATC advised the pilot that the area was overcast and issued the current destination weather. ATC advised that radar contact had been lost and the pilot acknowledged. ATC twice requested that the pilot ident but received no beacon returns. After ATC advised the pilot that radar contact was lost and issued the tower frequency, no further communications were received. The weather was scattered clouds at 8,000 and 15,000 feet with 40 miles visibility north of a mountain ridge. South of the ridge were scattered clouds at 2,500 feet and a broken ceiling at 3,300 feet with 7 miles visibility. Estimated cloud tops were about 8,000 feet. The highest terrain between the pilot and his destination was about 4,000 feet. The aircraft crashed on an ascending northern slope at the 3,700-foot elevation. The pilot had received a weather forecast that included obscuration in the vicinity of mountains, turbulence, and precipitation throughout the evening with VFR flight not recommended.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain an adequate terrain clearance altitude while attempting VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97FA202
- Event ID
- 20001208X08158
- Case number
- LAX97FA202
- 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 1997-06-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5930a1b70fcdb6615e7930c3fc7f369bd2060b8f8ba3666f5a869f430f570830; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:56:06.078Z.