LAX90FA112 · Cessna 150J
Cessna 150J · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Yuma International Airport / Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (YUM) to Gillespie Field (SEE)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX90FA112
- 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
Cessna 150J
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 150
- 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
- N152EZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yuma International Airport / Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (YUM), Yuma, AZTo Gillespie Field (SEE), El Cajon, 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); Stall/spin
- 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 › Stall/spin, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, intentional
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Pine Valley, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
NO RECORD WAS FOUND TO SUBSTANTIATE THAT THE STUDENT HAD EVER BEEN GIVEN ANY DUAL INSTRUCTION. HIS CERTIFICATE WAS NOT ENDORSED FOR SOLO OR SOLO CROSS COUNTRY PRIVILEGES. NO EVIDENCE WAS FOUND THAT THE PILOT OBTAINED ANY PREFLIGHT WEATHER INFORMATION FOR HIS ROUTE OF FLIGHT. A RANGE OF COASTAL MOUNTAINS SEPARATES THE DEPARTURE AND DESTINATION AIRPORTS, AND A MAJOR INTERSTATE HIGHWAY TRAVERSES THE RANGE IN A SYSTEM OF VALLEYS. THE ACCIDENT SITE WAS LOCATED ABOUT ONE MILE SOUTH OF THE HIGHWAY NEAR THE CREST OF A MOUNTAIN AT AN ELEVATION OF 4,200 FT MSL. EXAMINATION OF THE SITE REVEALED THE AIRCRAFT IMPACTED THE GROUND IN A STEEP NOSE DOWN ATTITUDE WHILE ROTATING TO THE RIGHT. SEARCH AND RESCUE HELICOPTER PILOTS RETURNING FROM ANOTHER AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT SITE FLEW NEAR THE LOCATION ABOUT ONE HOUR AFTER THE ACCIDENT. THE PILOTS REPORTED THAT THE TOPS OF THE MOUNTAINS WERE OBSCURED IN CLOUDS AND SNOW SHOWERS.
Probable cause
THE DECISION OF THE PILOT TO CONTINUE VFR FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS, SPATIAL DISORIENTATION AND INADVERTENT STALL/SPIN. FACTORS WERE: OBSCURATION, LOW CEILING, AND OVER-CONFIDENCE IN ABILITY.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX90FA112
- Event ID
- 20001212X22733
- Case number
- LAX90FA112
- 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: ca8aec16851f4fc7ff26ef69e8f2a2579d51312a0ab0371fb6a66e69070bc73f; retrieved 2026-09-21T02:54:12.856Z.