LAX01FA023 · Mooney M-20J
Mooney M-20J · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Mesquite Airport (67L) to Fallbrook Community Airpark (L18)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01FA023
- 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
- Not recorded
Mooney M-20J
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M-20
- 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
- N40VF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mesquite Airport (67L), Mesquite, NVTo Fallbrook Community Airpark (L18), Fallbrook, 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 › VFR flight into imc, attempted
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted mountainous terrain after the instrument rated commercial pilot reported that he was in the clouds and was picking up ice during a visual flight rules (VFR) cross-country flight. The pilot obtained an updated weather briefing at the departure airport, which advised him that VFR flight along his planned route was not recommended. A review of weather data indicated that the freezing level was at 9,536 feet msl and the bases of clouds ranged anywhere from 400 feet to 3,000 feet agl. The cloud tops in the area of the accident site were 22,000 feet. The accident site was at the 4,650-foot level of the mountain. No anomalies with the engine or airplane were noted that would have prevented their normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate weather evaluation and attempted VFR flight into IMC, which resulted in the in-flight collision with mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01FA023
- Event ID
- 20001212X22183
- Case number
- LAX01FA023
- 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: d5ef16a29c7010307c8c8846385097b9da7e6a32b2e4d4a2fc44ade2be3ef66f; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:48:35.403Z.