LAX00FA346 · Cessna 182G
Cessna 182G · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT) to Tuba City Airport (T03)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00FA346
- 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 182G
- 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
- N3103S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT), Deer Valley, AZTo Tuba City Airport (T03), AZ
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Descent, premature
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had volunteered the use of his airplane for the Flights For Life, Inc. organization, and was transporting blood to an Indian reservation airport. According to a courier for the hospital, the airplane was to arrive about 2035. The courier arrived about 2025, and about 2030, the pilot-operated runway lights came on. Within 3 to 5 minutes the courier saw an airplane's lights heading toward the airport. The airplane flew from south to north; she estimated about two telephone poles above the airport, continued north, and did not land. The courier estimated that the winds, which were rocking her car, were from the west. After waiting some period of time, she advised the hospital that the airplane did not arrive and she departed. She said the winds were calm at the time of her departure. The airplane was located the next day on the downwind leg in mountainous/hilly terrain. It was a dark night with few ground references.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertent descent into terrain on the downwind leg for landing. Contributing to the accident was the dark night and sparse population.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00FA346
- Event ID
- 20001212X21999
- Case number
- LAX00FA346
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-09-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 93fc6b8e43d847d68b2b37c546bcc35912e965d9c2eac3722e13cb90761c1a81; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:51:58.017Z.