LAX98FA264 · North American NAVION
North American NAVION · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Salinas Municipal Airport (SNS) to Buchanan Field (CCR)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98FA264
- 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
North American NAVION
- Aircraft type
- North American NAVION
- 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
- N8820H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salinas Municipal Airport (SNS), CATo Buchanan Field (CCR), Concord, 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 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 › VFR flight into imc, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated private pilot was cleared for takeoff with a northbound departure under a special visual flight rules clearance. The ceiling was 400 feet above ground level (AGL) and the visibility 5 miles. A few minutes after takeoff the pilot reported his position as clear of Class D airspace. The controller told him he could remain on frequency in case he needed to contact the tower due to weather. He had previously been informed that weather conditions were lower north of the airport. An eyewitness reported seeing a northbound aircraft beneath the clouds flying at an estimated altitude of 200 feet AGL. The controller attempted to contact the pilot without success. As the control tower operator was trying to reestablish communications he began receiving an emergency locator transmitter signal. The aircraft was subsequently located by emergency rescue personnel on the southern slope of rising terrain north of the airport. The airplane impacted the hillside at an elevation of 470 feet mean sea level. An examination of the aircraft failed to identify any mechanical discrepancies. The pilot did not have a current biennial flight review.
Probable cause
the pilot's attempt to continue visual flight operations into an area of known instrument meteorological conditions resulting in controlled flight into rising terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98FA264
- Event ID
- 20001211X10887
- Case number
- LAX98FA264
- 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: 21d51d1e07ea86d22e32c63afff7b62db688b8abfb77b9b2e43292561f40e9db; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:27:49.433Z.