LAX99FA262 · Cessna 177B
Cessna 177B · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN) to Big Bear City Airport (L35)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99FA262
- 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 177B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N19113
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN), Grand Canyon, AZTo Big Bear City Airport (L35), BIG BEAR, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, service of aircraft/equipment, improper
- Pilot in command › Performance data, unavailable
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The cross-country flight departed Big Bear, California, with stops in Las Vegas, Nevada, Grand Canyon, Arizona, and returning to Big Bear. The accident departure from Grand Canyon National Park Airport was performed on runway 03; an 8,999-foot runway with a 0.8 percent up gradient (76-foot increase), and a density altitude of 8,800 feet msl. Witnesses reported that the airplane appeared to be slow, and barely cleared trees and buildings while climbing into mildly rising terrain. About 2 miles from the runway, the airplane was seen to roll to the left and descended into trees. The FAA Approved Flight Manual (AFM) for the accident airplane/performance data was not found at the accident site; however, a Cessna 337 Skymaster AFM was found. A California Airport Directory was also recovered. No Grand Canyon Airport information was found at the site other than the Las Vegas Sectional Chart airport information. Examination of the dual magneto revealed internal case corrosion on the left interior of the magneto. The right magneto was timed 22 degrees BTC instead of 25 degrees BTC. Test bench results indicated that the right magneto exhibited a weak spark. The massive electrode spark plugs exhibited a gap in excess of the recommended maximum gap for the plug. Cylinder plugs No. 1 and 2 were fuel sooted, No. 3 appeared lean, and No. 4 was slightly sooted.
Probable cause
was the pilot's failure to have available and consult the FAA approved flight manual for performance data and, the high density altitude. Contributing to the accident were the dual magneto and spark plug system issues affecting optimum engine performance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99FA262
- Event ID
- 20001212X19546
- Case number
- LAX99FA262
- 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: b24d1ddac7b9c8fab7827673fc95c702715e9e21ea381b3a02bfbd4d61192a9c; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:55:41.961Z.