LAX00FA099 · Cessna 182L
Cessna 182L · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT) to Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00FA099
- 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 182L
- 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
- N3324R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT), Fresno, CATo Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL), Red Bluff, 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During his preflight weather briefing the instrument rated pilot was advised that VFR flight was not recommended, and was given several pilot reports for overcast conditions and icing in clouds between 9,000 and 13,000 feet along his route of flight. The pilot told the briefer he had already heard the hazardous weather advisories on the transcribed weather recording. Before departure, the pilot told relatives that he planned to navigate under visual flight rules because of forecast icing in clouds, and intended to remain low to circumnavigate areas of weather. However, in the hour following takeoff, radar data showed the aircraft turning and circling as it climbed approximately on course and eventually reaching 13,700 feet (msl) in proximity of the accident site. The Safety Board Meteorologist determined that, at that location and altitude, the aircraft would likely have been in clouds and conditions favorable for supercooled large droplets (SLD) producing a moderate to severe icing environment. The radar data showed the aircraft maneuvering in the area near the accident site and descending from 13,700 feet to 11,100 feet over 7 minutes, and then descending in a left-hand turn from 11,100 feet to 4,900 feet, where radar contact was lost in 3.4 minutes. The wreckage distribution indicated that the aircraft was in straight and level flight at impact with the mountainside. Area residents reported that the mountains were obscured in low clouds with poor visibility and periods of intense rain. The pilot was wearing a nasal cannula oxygen dispensing device.
Probable cause
The pilot's attempted flight into known adverse weather after receiving hazardous weather advisories, which resulted in inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions while attempting to maintain VFR conditions on top. The subsequent accumulation of structural icing required an emergency descent into conditions of low cloud ceilings and obscured mountains.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00FA099
- Event ID
- 20001212X20504
- Case number
- LAX00FA099
- 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: 067d40734eb013ad5fec1fa62efc8b6c020c122c75ed6c3486119d67aeac6ebe; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:27:01.552Z.