LAX89FA078 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From P06 · Bullhead City, AZ to L67 · Rialto, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX89FA078
- 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-28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N5157L
- Operator
- Troxell, Carl R. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From P06 · Bullhead City, AZTo L67 · Rialto, 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, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
ACCIDENT SITE IN PASS AT AN ELEVATION 3,200 FT MSL, 1/2 MILE FROM INTERSTATE HIGHWAY. 10,000 FT MOUNTAINS BOTH SIDES. SHERIFF'S HELO PILOTS FLYING PATROL BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER THE ACCIDENT TIME FRAME REPORTED RAPIDLY FORMING AND DISSIPATING STRATUS CLOUDS WHICH OBSCURED THE HILL SIDES AND FLOOR OF THE PASS. THE PILOT HAD ARRANGED FOR A COWORKER TO PICK HIM UP AT THE DESTINATION AIRPORT. THE PILOT HAD RECENTLY OBTAINED 13 HOURS OF INSTRUMENT DUAL INSTRUCTION.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S DECISION TO CONTINUE VFR FLIGHT AFTER ENCOUNTERING INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS WHILE ATTEMPTING TO TRANSIT THROUGH A MOUNTAIN PASS. CONTRIBUTING FACTORS WAS: THE PILOT'S SELF-INDUCED PRESSURE KNOWING THAT A CO-WORKER WAS PROBABLY WAITING FOR HIM AT THE DESTINATION AIRPORT; OVER CONFIDENCE IN PERSONAL ABILITY AFTER HAVING RECENTLY RECEIVED INSTRUMENT DUAL INSTRUCTION; AND THE ADVERSE WEATHER AND TERRAIN CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX89FA078
- Event ID
- 20001213X27596
- Case number
- LAX89FA078
- 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: 640bd3fa7d55c8acabe46ea1594f442beec8e20252a08e96bbef3119d1aa71f9; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:26:09.224Z.