LAX98FA282 · Simons LANCAIR 235 LANCAIR 23
Simons LANCAIR 235 LANCAIR 23 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Chino Airport (CNO) to Roberts Field (RDM)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98FA282
- 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
Simons LANCAIR 235 LANCAIR 23
- Aircraft type
- Simons LANCAIR 235
- 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
- N1142W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chino Airport (CNO), Chino, CATo Roberts Field (RDM), Redmond, OR
- 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 › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated pilot received a weather briefing for his original route of flight the morning of the accident and was advised that IFR conditions existed along that route but that VFR conditions existed through the desert areas. The briefer told the pilot that mid level broken to scattered cloud layers were forecasted and that no thunderstorm activity was expected until after 1100. About 40 minutes into his flight, a pilot friend in a second airplane that was traveling to the same destination caught up with the pilot and they conversed via radio. The second pilot indicated that he filed an IFR flight plan due to the uncertain nature of the weather forecasts. The second pilot stated that the weather started to turn bad, and the accident pilot told him that he was going to turn back. The second pilot saw him make a 180-degree turn and descend into clouds; he did not receive any further communication from the accident pilot. Witnesses at the accident site stated that it had been raining and the clouds were all the way down to the ground, with one witness saying she could not see the neighbor's house 1/4-mile away. One witness stated that the airplane flew directly over her house no higher than 75 feet, made a tight right turn, and then crashed to the ground with a loud bang. The extensively fragmented wreckage was distributed over a distance of 718 feet. Examination of the airframe, engine, propeller, and avionics revealed no discrepancies. Review of the pilot's logbook revealed no evidence of instrument flight experience since 1958.
Probable cause
Pilot's inadvertent VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions , which resulted in spatial disorientation and a subsequent loss of aircraft control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98FA282
- Event ID
- 20001211X11085
- Case number
- LAX98FA282
- 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: 4d9572d28b428260a39835216083f253d7421e0cfa2236e802f76fed03d4a15a; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:26:47.894Z.