LAX89FA091 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Watsonville Municipal Airport (WVI) to Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX89FA091
- 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 172M
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N61587
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Watsonville Municipal Airport (WVI), Watsonville, CATo Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO), Santa Monica, 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 · Estimated position: the centre of Oxnard, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT LISTENED TO WX RPRTS ON THE RADIO, BUT DIDN'T RCV AN FAA OR NWS BRIEFING. A FRONTAL SYS WAS FORECASTED TO ACROSSHIS RTE OF FLT WITH PRCTNS FOR MULTIPLE CLOUD LAYERS, LOW CEILINGS, RESTRICTED VIS, ICING & RAIN SHOWERS. THE PLT TOLD A FRIEND, WHO DROVE HIM TO THE ARPT, THAT HE COULD 'FLY UNDER THE HEAVY CLOUDS' THAT THEY OBSERVED TO THE SOUTH. THE ACFT DEPD WATSONVILLE AT ABT 1450 PST, BUT DIDN'T ARRIVE AT THE DESTN (SANTA MONICA); 15 DAYS LTR, IT WAS FND ON ANACOPAISLAND (14 MI WEST OF OXNARD), WHERE IT IMPACTED A 1112' RIDGE AT ABT THE 440' LVL. RADAR DATA SHOWED A PROBABLE TRACK LEADING TWD THE ACDNT SITE, BUT IT HAD DISAPPEARED ABT 22 MI NW OF THE CRASH SITE, AFTER THE ACFT HAD FLOWN WEST OF A MORE DIRECT RTE (OVER OCEAN WATER). A HELICOPTER PLT, WHO WAS IN THE VCTNY AT THE TIME, RPRTD A 500' BROKEN TO OVERCAST SKY COND WITH LESS THAN 2 MI VIS & MOD RAIN SHOWERS. THE ACDNT WAS ESTIMATED TO HAVE OCCURRED AT ABT DUSK. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE/MALFUNCTION OF THE ACFT OR ENG WAS FND.
Probable cause
CONTINUED VFR FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO INSTRUMENT METEORLOGICAL CONDITIONS WHICH RESULTED IN AN IN-FLIGHT COLLSION WITH TERRAIN. RELATED FACTORS WERE: FAILURE OF THE PILOT TO USE A PREFLIGHT BRIEFING SERVICE, HIS DECISION TO INITIATE FLIGHT INTO KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER, THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS, THE PILOT'S VISUAL PERCEPTION AT DUSK, AND THE RISING/MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX89FA091
- Event ID
- 20001213X27601
- Case number
- LAX89FA091
- 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 1989-01-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1aadafd7d4f4e21da5d165f215b8101ee576861d0c065a674a72140d74cad0a7; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:26:02.720Z.