LAX91FA281 · Cessna 182Q
Cessna 182Q · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL) to Monterey Regional Airport (MRY)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX91FA281
- 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 182Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N759FY
- Operator
- Francisco Garcia
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL), Fullerton, CATo Monterey Regional Airport (MRY), Monterey, 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 › Judgment, poor
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE CERTIFICATED PRIVATE PILOT AND A PASSENGER WERE ON A PERSONAL CROSS COUNRY FLIGHT AND WERE REPORTED OVERDUE. SEARCH PERSONNEL LOCATED THE ACCIDENT THE FOLLOWING DAY, AFTER RECEIVING AN ELT SIGNAL. THE AIRPLANE WAS FOUND ON THE EAST FACE OF A 4000 FOOT MOUNTAIN AT AN EELEVATION OF 3500 FEET. THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT OBTAINED A WEATHER BRIEFING PRIOR TO THE FLIGHT IN WHICH FLIGHT PRECAUTIONS WERE FORECASTED AND VFR FLIGHT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED. THE WEATHER CONDITIONS ALONG THE ROUTE OF FLIGHT WERE REPORTED TO BE MOUNTAIN OBSCURATION, MODERATE TURBULENCE, BROKEN CEILINGS OF 1500 TO 2000 FEET WITH VARIOUS LAYERS OF CLOUDS. COASTAL CONDITIONS INCLUDED LIMITED VISIBILITIES OF 3 TO 5 MILES IN FOG AND HAZE AND SOME SCATTERED LIGHT RAIN SHOWERS. WHEN THE PILOT OPENED THE VFR FLIGHT PLAN, THE INFORMATION THAT VFR FLIGHT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED WAS AGAIN STRESSED.
Probable cause
POOR JUDGEMENT BY THE PILOT TO CONTINUE VFR FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WAS IFR CONDITIONS THAT INCLUDED LOW CEILINGS AND LOW VISIBILITY AND INSUFFICIENT INSTRUMENT TRAINING OF THE PILOT TO DEAL WITH THE IFR CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX91FA281
- Event ID
- 20001212X17289
- Case number
- LAX91FA281
- 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: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 574c81b450e4b4f8da69e0e4577660f703d27885fac6fcda9b96e493f32f04b9; retrieved 2026-09-21T01:44:42.944Z.