LAX00LA135 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Phoenix Goodyear Airport (KGYR) to John Wayne Orange County International Airport (KSNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA135
- 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
- 0 · 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 172
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N7354A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Goodyear Airport (KGYR), Goodyear, AZTo John Wayne Orange County International Airport (KSNA), Santa Ana, 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
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, improper
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, attempted
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Corona, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passengers had taken off from Goodyear airport in Phoenix, Arizona for a flight to Santa Ana, California. The pilot said he obtained a weather briefing from the airport at Goodyear, but did not check with anybody concerning the fog he encountered near Corona, California. He stated that the Riverside and Corona area was 'socked in' with heavy fog and clouds, but that the outlying areas in the Moreno Valley were clear. He stated that the fog was coming in fast with low ceilings, so he decided to land in the clearing. While they were at the clearing, the pilot's father went to a nearby landfill and purchased approximately 18 gallons of automotive fuel for the airplane. After the fog began to clear, the pilot said they got ready to takeoff, and he got about 2-3 feet in the air when the engine suddenly died as if he had pulled back on the throttle. He said he also heard a popping noise but could not determine if it was the engine or a rock hitting the airplane. Later the pilot told FAA investigators that he did not have a problem with the engine. After the accident, at the request of the local fire department officials, the pilot drained approximately 18 gallons of fuel from the airplane. During a postaccident examination, the engine was started normally three times, with good throttle response and normal oil pressure.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate weather evaluation, and his improper remedial actions that led to a precautionary landing and subsequent attempted takeoff from unsuitable terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA135
- Event ID
- 20001212X20678
- Case number
- LAX00LA135
- 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: 52a0ce22e7b7d40e3f62f4f06f85d4a5fffd6ed89653279d7b3edfdf82351d0d; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:01:43.817Z.