LAX97FA225 · Cessna R172K
Cessna R172K · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Long Beach International Airport (LGB) to AHA QUIN, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97FA225
- 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
Cessna R172K
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N7373K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Beach International Airport (LGB), Long Beach, CATo AHA QUIN, 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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, continued
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Moreno Valley, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
There is no record of the pilot having received a weather briefing before takeoff. Radar data showed the aircraft following a highway toward higher terrain at approximately the altitude of the cloud bases. At the end of the radar data the aircraft climbed until radar contact was lost near the accident site in mountainous/hilly terrain. Witnesses at the accident site reported that the aircraft flew 300 to 400 feet over their position and was barely visible in the base of the clouds. The engine was 'straining' and then they heard the plane crash. Rescue personnel said that at the time of their arrival the visibility at the site was about 50 feet in fog.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions, and his attempt to climb through a low stratus cloud layer while in mountainous/hilly terrain. The pilot's failure to obtain a weather briefing, the weather, and the terrain were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97FA225
- Event ID
- 20001208X08161
- Case number
- LAX97FA225
- 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: e141712055b42b8cd04aac924c78e2f0459d192cf504cb4803bc3473c8bf2a81; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:54:50.733Z.