LAX87FA102 · Cessna 172P
Monterey Flyers Cessna 172P · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA) to MTY · Monterey, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX87FA102
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172P
- 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
- N62127
- Operator
- Monterey Flyers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA), Santa Barbara, CATo MTY · Monterey, 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
THE PLT RCVD A PREFLT BRIEFING BEFORE A MORNING DEP FM MONTEREY. AT THAT TIME, THE FORECAST WAS FOR 3000' TO 5000' BROKEN CLOUDS WITH WIDELY SCATTERED RAIN SHOWERS BY 1600 & WITH A GEN OUTLOOK OF VFR. THE PLT FLEW TO SANTA BARBARA TO ATTEND A MEETING & DEPD SANTA BARBARA AT 1709 FOR THE RTRN TRIP W/O OBTAINING A PREFLT WX BRIEFING. WHEN THE ACFT DEPD ON THE NGT X-COUNTRY FLT, WX CONDS EN ROUTE WERE 2500' TO 5000' BROKEN TO OVERCAST WITH TOPS RPRTD TO 8500' & FLT PRE- CAUTIONS FOR MTN OBSCUREMENT. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE ACFT IMPACTED RISING TERRAIN NEAR THE TOP OF A HILL AT AN ELEV OF APRX 2700' MSL. THERE WAS EVIDENCE THE ACFT WAS IN LVL FLT WHEN THE ACDNT OCCURRED. IMPACT WAS APRX 200 YDS FROM A 2-LANE HIWAY. PERSONS IN THE AREA RPRTD THE WX CONDS CONSISTED OF A LOW OVERCAST, VIS APRX 1/2 MI WITH FOG & LGT RAIN. NO PREIMPACT MECHANICAL PROBLEMS WERE EVIDENT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX87FA102
- Event ID
- 20001213X30091
- Case number
- LAX87FA102
- 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 1987-01-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b45a7bc0b56772497b6b60d6b3c8d5548d4ec8ff1af04e69fcb1f81ca33dba59; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:14:54.189Z.