LAX98FA050 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Seychelles International Airport (SEZ) to Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98FA050
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20J
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M20
- 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
- N301JL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seychelles International Airport (SEZ)To Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG), Flagstaff, AZ
- 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
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Sedona, AZ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The area forecast was for VFR to MVFR conditions with occasional visibility reducing to 3 to 5 miles in mist. The 700 mb (10,000 feet MSL) Constant Pressure chart depicted Flagstaff as having northwesterly winds of approximately 25 knots. After checking the weather several times, the pilot departed Sedona (elevation 4,827 feet). No flight plan had been filed for the 21 mile northbound flight to Flagstaff. Dark night conditions existed at the time of the accident and there were no ground lights in the direction of flight. After takeoff, the northbound aircraft struck the leeward side of a 6,100-foot ridge, about the 5,952-foot level, and at a point located along a direct route to Flagstaff. The crash site was located bearing 019 degrees and 4.3 miles from the Sedona airport. Given the wind and mountainous terrain in the area of the accident, the influence of such winds would result in downslope wind conditions over the accident site.
Probable cause
the failure of the pilot to maintain adequate terrain clearance during the climb. Contributing factors were dark night conditions, mountainous/hilly terrain, and mountain wave weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98FA050
- Event ID
- 20001208X09325
- Case number
- LAX98FA050
- 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 1997-12-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fa4588463555b49cf0e62918f63b61beb4479e9bddaf649467df894b1e02ce3b; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:44:37.434Z.