LAX87FA045 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Mesa Del Rey Airport (KIC) to General William J Fox Airfield (WJF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX87FA045
- 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 150L
- 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
- N18235
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mesa Del Rey Airport (KIC), Kernville, CATo General William J Fox Airfield (WJF), Lancaster, 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 · climb to 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRCRAFT DEPARTED THE KERN VALLEY AIRPORT, KERNVILLE, CALIFORNIA, ON A DIRECT CROSS-COUNTRY ROUTE TO ITS HOME BASE AT GENERAL WILLIAM J. FOX AIRFIELD, LANCASTER, CALIFORNIA. THE FLIGHT ROUTE WAS OVER MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN THAT WAS OBSCURED BY CLOUDS. A FLIGHT PLAN WAS NOT FILED AND THE CREW DID NOT RECEIVE A WEATHER BRIEFING. A PILOT WHO DEPARTED KERN VALLEY AIRPORT APPROXIMATELY 30 MINUTES AFTER THE ACCIDENT AIRCRAFT AND FLEW BY GENERAL FOX AIRFIELD STATED THE CEILING WAS AT 5500 TO 6500 FEET MSL AND HE ELECTED TO MAINTAIN VISUAL CONTACT WITH THE GROUND BY FLYING OVER VALLEYS THUS CIRCUMNAVIGATING THE HIGHER TERRAIN. WHEN THE PILOTS DID NOT REPORT FOR WORK FOR THE AFTERNOON SHIFT ON NOVEMBER 17, 1986 FRIENDS REPORTED THEM OVERDUE TO THE FAA FLIGHT SERVICE STATION. DUE TO THE LOW CEILINGS ALONG THE AIRCRAFT'S ASSUMED FLIGHT ROUTE AND AERIAL SEARCH COULD NOT BE CONDUCTED. THE GROUND SEARCH RESCUE CREW LOCATED THE AIRCRAFT'S WRECKAGE AT APPROXIMATELY, 1450 PDT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX87FA045
- Event ID
- 20001213X35184
- Case number
- LAX87FA045
- 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: e20768f9246335663610510d84176610a27ac66d6ba17a0f04c80fabaaab6b66; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:19:59.835Z.