LAX99FA316 · Piper PA-24-180
Piper PA-24-180 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From 069 · Petaluma, CA to Bryce Canyon Airport (BCE)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99FA316
- 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
Piper PA-24-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N5673P
- Operator
- Joseph W. Burton · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 069 · Petaluma, CATo Bryce Canyon Airport (BCE), BRYCE CANYON, UT
- 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, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a multi state cross-country flight and was reported missing when the airplane failed to arrive at the destination. The pilot originally had filed an IFR flight plan the night before his proposed departure and also obtained a weather briefing. The weather information contained in the briefing was substantially correct. He was delayed due to fog from his estimated time of departure and never refiled or opened the flight plan. CAP search aircraft located the wreckage 1 week after the accident. The aircraft was found at the 11,760-foot level of a mountain and about 1,000 feet below the peak. The site is about 2 miles south of the route of flight filed in his flight plan. Ground witnesses said there were gusty winds, heavy rain, and thunderstorms in the area the day of the crash, with clouds obscuring the mountaintop where the accident occurred. In his flight plan, the pilot had originally filed for 13,000 feet, and pilot reports during the morning and early afternoon indicated that the cloud bases were 10,000 to 12,000 feet over the mountains, with higher layers to 24,000 feet. Conditions were favorable for light to moderate clear and/or mixed icing in clouds and precipitation above 12,000 feet. No preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures were found during examination of the airframe and engine. A review of the pilot's logbook indicated that he had 223 hours of actual instrument time and 71 hours of simulated instrument time. About 4 months preceding the accident, he had logged 3 hours.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into known instrument meteorological conditions, including icing, which resulted in an in-flight collision with mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99FA316
- Event ID
- 20001212X19793
- Case number
- LAX99FA316
- 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: 30ff959bf440ab8fa908b03403deca7636bbdb20b844068af8bd3d3a767a348a; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:47:34.459Z.