LAX93FA165 · Cessna 152
Palo Alto Flying Club Cessna 152 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Ashland Municipal Airport Sumner Parker Field (S03) to Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX93FA165
- 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
- N89174
- Operator
- Palo Alto Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ashland Municipal Airport Sumner Parker Field (S03), Ashland, ORTo Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, 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); Stall
- 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, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AFTER RECEIVING A WEATHER BRIEFING, THE COMMERCIAL/INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT, THE SOLE OCCUPANT, DEPARTED ON A NIGHT CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT OVER MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN. THE FORECASTED WEATHER CONDITIONS INCLUDED SCATTERED CLOUDS AT 4,000 TO 6,000 FEET, BROKEN CLOUDS AT 8,000 FEET WITH A FREEZING LEVEL OF 7,000 FEET. NO FLIGHT PLAN WAS FILED. NO FURTHER CONTACT WITH THE AIRPLANE WAS FOUND UNTIL THE WRECKAGE OF THE AIRPLANE WAS LOCATED 7 DAYS AFTER DEPARTURE. WITNESSES IN THE AREA OF THE ACCIDENT REPORTED CONTINUOUS RAIN ON THE NIGHT OF THE ACCIDENT. THE LAST NTAP RADAR DATA OF THE AIRPLANE SHOWED A DESCENT FROM 8,000 FEET TO 7,400 FEET BEFORE CONTACT WAS LOST. A METEOROLOGICAL STUDY OF THE ACCIDENT AREA REVEALED AREAS OF LIGHT RAIN WITH A FREEZING LEVEL OF 6,300 FEET.
Probable cause
AN INADVERTENT ENCOUNTER WITH RAIN AND ICING CONDITIONS. FACTORS IN THIS ACCIDENT INCLUDED ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS CONSISTING OF RAIN, ICING, AND DARKNESS, AND THE PILOT'S OVERCONFIDENCE IN HIS ABILITIES TO DEAL WITH THE ENCOUNTERED WEATHER CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX93FA165
- Event ID
- 20001211X12000
- Case number
- LAX93FA165
- 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 1993-03-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1148c44ae1a177fa86723a28b9e4156b110715965a87cc2d4b0d84b5c5ce3602; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:39:04.082Z.