LAX91FA111 · Cessna 150L
Aviation Services Cessna 150L · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From an unrecorded airport to L39 · Ramona, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX91FA111
- 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
Cessna 150L
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 150
- 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
- N18526
- Operator
- Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo L39 · Ramona, 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)
- 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(cfi) › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command(cfi) › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR AND STUDENT PILOT WERE PLANNING TO CONDUCT TOUCH AND GO LANDINGS AT A NEARBY AIRPORT, ABOUT 15 MILES EAST OF THE DEPARTURE AIRPORT. THEY DID ONE TAKEOFF AND LANDING AT THE DEPARTURE AIRPORT, BUT WERE DENIED ANY FURTHER OPERATIONS BECAUSE THE WEATHER CONDITIONS WERE BELOW VFR MINIMUMS. THE CFI REQUESTED AND RECEIVED A SPECIAL VFR CLEARANCE AND DEPARTED THE CONTROL ZONE TO THE EAST. ABOUT 2 MINUTES AFTER REPORTING CLEAR OF THE CONTROL ZONE, THE AIRPLANE COLLIDED WITH A HILL 8 MILES SOUTHEAST OF THE DEPARTURE AIRPORT ABOUT 925 FEET MSL IN A WINGS AND NOSE LEVEL ATTITUDE. A HELICOPTER PILOT OPERATING IN THE AREA REPORTED CEILINGS OF ABOUT 800 TO 850 FEET MSL. TOXICOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE URINE OF THE CFI REVEALED A HIGH LEVEL OF ANTIHISTAMINE.
Probable cause
THE CFI/PIC'S INADEQUATE IN-FLIGHT PLANNING/DECISION AND THE CONTINUED VFR FLIGHT INTO AN AREA OF IMC CONDITIONS. THE PILOT'S IMPAIRMENT DUE TO HIGH LEVELS OF ANTIHISTAMINE AND THE LOW CEILING WERE FACTORS IN THE ACCIDENT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX91FA111
- Event ID
- 20001212X16462
- Case number
- LAX91FA111
- 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 1991-02-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e52209227a0a10bd3ba1946816430ef5697722727ef8886014ad1f1245b74039; retrieved 2026-09-21T01:57:39.919Z.