LAX92FA330 · Mercury 1
Mercury 1 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From O01 · Santa Rosa, CA to Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX92FA330
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Mercury 1
- Aircraft type
- Mercury 1
- 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
- N4625T
- Operator
- Paul Beaulac
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From O01 · Santa Rosa, CATo 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 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 › VFR flight into imc, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT AND HIS PASSENGER DEPARTED ON A CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT AFTER AN INTERMEDIATE RE-FUELING STOP. THEY REPORTEDLY INTENDED TO DO SOME SIGHTSEEING EN ROUTE. DURING THEIR FLIGHT THEY ENCOUNTERED INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS AND COLLIDED WITH HILLY/MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN. WITNESSES LOCATED ABOUT 300 YARDS FROM THE ACCIDENT SITE REPORTED THE TERRAIN IN THE VICINITY OF THE ACCIDENT WAS OBSCURED BY GROUND FOG. THEY SAID THEY COULD HEAR THE AIRPLANE, BUT COULD NOT SEE IT DUE TO WEATHER CONDITIONS. AN FAA AIRWORTHINESS INSPECTOR EXAMINED THE AIRPLANE AND ENGINE AT THE ACCIDENT LOCATION. HE NOTED THAT THE AIRPLANE'S WOODEN PROPELLER SHATTERED ON IMPACT AND DETERMINED THE ENGINE WAS PRODUCING POWER.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S DECISION TO ATTEMPT VISUAL FLIGHT IN INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX92FA330
- Event ID
- 20001211X15426
- Case number
- LAX92FA330
- 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 1992-08-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 04f4faad01a7164d3be15f7bd56ab6aa984c59e52b8d7a5182875ce61a884e34; retrieved 2026-09-21T01:00:45.545Z.