LAX00FA354 · Piper PA-38
Mazzei Flying Service Piper PA-38 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From an unrecorded airport to Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00FA354
- 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
- 1 · 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
Piper PA-38
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-38
- 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
- N2493G
- Operator
- Mazzei Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT), Fresno, 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 · climb to 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The recently certificated, non-instrument rated, private pilot took off in conditions of nighttime darkness from a coastal valley airport and climbed over a sparsely lighted area toward rising terrain. The airplane entered low stratus clouds that were not visible to the pilot until the airplane flew into them. He attempted to reverse course back toward the airport; however, during the turn the right wingtip contacted terrain in a plowed field and the airplane cartwheeled to the ground. The accident site was 4 miles from the departure airport and 120 feet higher elevation. The pilot obtained his certificate about 3 weeks prior and had 55 total flying hours, which included 5 hours at night. The pilot reported there were no mechanical problems with the aircraft.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from terrain while turning to reverse course following inadvertent nighttime flight into instrument meteorological conditions. A factor in the accident was the pilot's lack of experience in nighttime operations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00FA354
- Event ID
- 20001212X22001
- Case number
- LAX00FA354
- 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 2000-10-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 028b3bbaf6013f15ecb22d7bc9954f23ecad66c98f61b0f1ecb743ebab7dbede; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:50:28.845Z.