LAX94FA007 · Cessna 172N
Aerovision Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG) to Sedona, AZ
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94FA007
- 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 172N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N5365D
- Operator
- Aerovision
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG), Flagstaff, AZTo Sedona, 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 · 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 › Altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was returning from a day long charter flight. About 2000 hours, the pilot dropped his passengers in Flagstaff, Arizona, and departed for Sedona, located 21 miles to the south. At a point 13.6 miles south of Flagstaff, the airplane collided with a sheer rock wall about 1,000 feet below the top of the mountainous terrain. Based on weather data and witness statements, low clouds existed in the accident area around the time of the accident. A witness reported seeing the airplane's lights flash on the clouds while the aircraft appeared to be reversing course. The witnesses heard normal engine sounds until the impact. No system discrepancies were noted during the examination of the aircraft. Based on fuel calculations, the airplane had about 5.5 gallons of fuel on board or about 40 minutes of flight time remaining.
Probable cause
the pilot's decision to continue VFR at an improper altitude into mountainous terrain at night and the inadvertent encounter with clouds along the route. Self-induced pressure due to a low fuel state contributed to the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94FA007
- Event ID
- 20001211X13580
- Case number
- LAX94FA007
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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 1993-10-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6425ae25312740109e800a5cd543b281af57c4ca49b6acf97f13cbe5aed43d37; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:21:39.594Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. The narrative states "the pilot dropped his passengers in Flagstaff, Arizona, and departed for Sedona"; the destination was not recorded.