LAX00FA213 · Cessna 414A
Cessna 414A · Accident en route
From Van Nuys Airport (VNY) to Las Vegas Municipal Airport (LVS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00FA213
- 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 414A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 414
- 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
- N414PS
- Operator
- Patrick W. Swayze · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, CATo Las Vegas Municipal Airport (LVS), Las Vegas, NM
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Air cond/heating/pressurization › Loss, partial
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Fractured
- Pilot in command › Physical impairment(carbon monoxide)
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported hearing a loud noise and feeling his ears pop while the twin-engine airplane was in cruise flight about 12,900 feet. Radar data revealed that the airplane was on a relatively straight and level flight track until approximately 1 hour prior to the accident, when it initiated a spiraling descent to the left. The airplane continued toward the accident site on an erratic flight path, with the altitude varying between 6,000 and 9,000 feet. The pilot reported having trouble seeing his instruments and felt confused. He thought he was landing at an airport New Mexico near his ranch, but landed on a road in Arizona and struck light poles. Witnesses at the accident site stated that the pilot appeared impaired and confused, but did not smell of alcohol. The pilot left the accident site, and was not tested for alcohol or carbon monoxide poisoning. He reported that he did not consume any drugs or alcohol prior to, or during the flight, but did report smoking three packs of cigarettes a day and also smoked cigars. Examination of the pressurization and cabin air systems revealed that a fractured clamp that could have prevented the cabin from maintaining pressurization. In addition, there was evidence of engine exhaust by-products in some components of the airplane's pressurization system that should not have been exposed to engine exhaust. The source of the engine exhaust infusion into the pressurization system could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot's physical impairment due to the cumulative effects of carbon monoxide from engine exhaust by-products, carbon monoxide from heavy tobacco use, and the loss of an undetermined amount of cabin pressurization. A factor in the loss of pressurization was a fractured clamp.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00FA213
- Event ID
- 20001212X21252
- Case number
- LAX00FA213
- 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, coordinates. 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: 23195be9078391fd0231cd45a386e390307c6bd5e66c367557e280487667d9d6; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:51:03.227Z.