LAX88FA014 · Piper PA-28-181
Cal State Flying Club Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) to LBG · Long Beach, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX88FA014
- 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
- 3 · 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-28-181
- 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
- N47529
- Operator
- Cal State Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, NVTo LBG · Long Beach, 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
BFR TKOF, THE PLT FILED A VFR FLT PLAN & RCVD A WX BRIEFING WHICH INCLUDED AN AIRMET. THE AIRMET CONTAINED PRECAUTIONARYINFO ABT INSTRUMENT CONDS (IMC), ICING & MTN OBSCURATION IN CALIF. WHEN THE PLT OPENED HIS FLT PLAN WITH THE FSS, HE WASAGAIN BRIEFED ON THE AIRMET. DRG FLT, THE ACFT IMPACTED STEEP/RISING TRRN ON THE NE SLOPE OF MT HARDWOOD AT AN ELEV OF APRX 8750'. THE PLT HAD PLANNED FOR FLT ALONG PUBLISHED AIRWAYS & FILED TO CRUISE AT 8500' MSL. FOR FLT IN THE VCNTY OF THE ACDNT, HE HAD FILED TO FOLL0W V-394 FM DAGGET TO APLES INTXN (HDG 214 DEG), THEN TO TURN & F0LLOW V-442 TO PARADISE (HDG 192 DEG). HOWEVER, AFTER REACHING APLES INTXN, THE ACFT DID NOT CHANGE COURSE, BUT CONTD IN THE SAME DRCTN (AS IF CONTG ON V-394). ABT 21 MI BYD APLES INTXN, IT CRASHED. FOR INSTRUMENT FLT NR THE CRASH SITE, THE MIN EN ROUTE ALT ON V-394 WAS 11,500'. THE PLT HAD RECENTLY TAKEN FLT TRAINING IN PREPARATION FOR AN INSTRUMENT RATING. THE ELT HAD ACTIVATED, BUT AERIAL SEARCH & RESCUE OPNS WERE NOT PSBL ON THE DAY OF THE ACDNT DUE TO IMC WX IN THE MTNS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX88FA014
- Event ID
- 20001213X32347
- Case number
- LAX88FA014
- 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: 86a7d9139aa75d434d2ce46f1acf38e01734e45f0900c316f4fa222133cff3df; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:57:17.612Z.