LAX94FA056 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF) to Stellar Airpark (P19)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94FA056
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172M
- 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
- N5312R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF), San Diego, CATo Stellar Airpark (P19), Chandler, 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and his pilot-rated passenger departed for a night cross-country flight. They were receiving visual flight rules advisories and had been assigned a discrete transponder code. They were climbing to an altitude of 9,500 feet msl, and were at 9,100 feet msl when radio and radar contact were lost. The last recorded radio transmission from the pilot was, 'We're in a flat (blocked out), we're going to lose it dad.' A search was initiated, and the airplane and its occupants were found the next day. The cloud bases in the area were reported by other pilots to be about 7,100 feet msl, with tops about 13,000 feet. The light conditions were reported to be 'dark night' with little surface ambient light in the sparsely populated area. The pilot's logbook was examined, and no indication was found of the pilot having flown during the 90-day period preceding the accident. Neither the pilot nor the pilot-rated passenger had an instrument rating. Postaccident examination of the airplane did not reveal any preexisting deficiencies.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN AIRCRAFT CONTROL. FACTORS IN THIS ACCIDENT WERE: 1) THE DARK NIGHT AND LACK OF AMBIENT LIGHT WHICH RESULTED IN THE PILOT INADVERTENTLY FLYING FROM VISUAL METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS; 2) THE PILOT'S LACK OF INSTRUMENT FLIGHT EXPERIENCE, AND 3) SPATIAL DISORIENTATION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94FA056
- Event ID
- 20001211X13744
- Case number
- LAX94FA056
- 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 1993-11-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1c96e3d6748df06c92e76813548501b52a178c7b843d6137aa38fce52d1ec0b7; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:18:42.842Z.