LAX98FA006 · Cessna 152
Plus One Flyers Cessna 152 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Gillespie Field (SEE) to L15 · Las Vegas, NV
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98FA006
- 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 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
- N67293
- Operator
- Plus One Flyers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gillespie Field (SEE), San Diego, CATo L15 · Las Vegas, 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 · 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- 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 on a cross-country flight to Nevada following his receipt of a weather briefing that indicated multiple layers of clouds, and moderate to severe turbulence along the route in an unstable air mass. While climbing en route the pilot requested and received radar flight following service. About 15 minutes after takeoff, the pilot informed the radar controller that he was making a 180-degree turn. Radar data indicates that seconds following the pilot's transmission, the airplane commenced a rapid descent. During the final 60 seconds of recorded flight, the airplane descended from 7,200 to 4,500 feet. The airplane impacted a 3,400-foot msl hillside. Wreckage was found scattered over a 150-foot-long path, about 0.11 mile from its last radar position. Airborne and ground-based witnesses near the area reported the presence of an overcast sky condition with cloud bases near ground level and tops over 13,000 feet. The precipitation intensity varied between sprinkles to heavy rain showers.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning which resulted in VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions and the loss of aircraft control. Contributing was the pilot's overconfidence in his ability, clouds, and rain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98FA006
- Event ID
- 20001208X09043
- Case number
- LAX98FA006
- 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: 51e57ed59efd2db70e081409f38146ebd87ada4cdf20ac56b07fe97cd26d2c8c; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:47:44.151Z.