LAX99LA002 · Cessna 152
Interwings Cessna 152 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From 027 · Oakdale, CA to Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA002
- 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
- 0 · 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
- N957AF
- Operator
- Interwings
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 027 · Oakdale, CATo Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), REED HILL VIEW, 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft collided with mountainous terrain about 3,000 feet msl while descending from 4,500 feet toward the destination airport on a dark night. Weather reports showed consistent overcast cloud bases of 2,800 feet in the immediate area of the accident site. A review of the ATC tape revealed that the pilot did not clearly state his intentions when speaking with air traffic control. ATC had to ask him several times what he said and told him that they did not understand him. Interviews conducted with ATC controllers revealed that they were unsure exactly what the pilot intentions were other than to land at Reed Hillview airport. Weather in the area was deteriorating and ATC was in the process of sequencing traffic for IFR approaches into nearby airports. At one point ATC asked the pilot if he was going to find a hole and descend. The pilot stated affirmative. When radio and radar contact was lost, the controller asked a police helicopter flying near the last observed position to search for the airplane that had disappeared off the radar. The helicopter pilot told the controller that he was unable to proceed to the location due to clouds obscuring the ridges. The pilot stated he could hear a helicopter above him but could not see it because of poor visibility.
Probable cause
Continued VFR flight by the pilot into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) at night over mountainous terrain. The pilot's use of unclear language when stating his intentions to air traffic control was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA002
- Event ID
- 20001211X11284
- Case number
- LAX99LA002
- 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 1998-10-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9371edc2242621d614d332b27fb15479b673ef493e216577e037fa9216d84c59; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:40:57.857Z.