LAX84FA460 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Imperial County Airport (IPL) to Bakersfield International Airport (L45)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX84FA460
- 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-28-161
- 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
- N38916
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Imperial County Airport (IPL), Imperial, CATo Bakersfield International Airport (L45), Bakersfield, 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 › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Bakersfield, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PLT DEPARTED IMPERIAL, CA ON 4/18/84 AT ABOUT 1845 PST. TWO PEOPLE REPORTED THAT AT 2100 TO 2200 PST, THEY SAW AN ACFT CIRCLING IN THE AREA OF CUMMINGS MOUNTAIN, ABOUT 10 MI SOUTH OF THE ACCIDENT SITE, BUT BECAUSE THE MOUNTAIN TOPS WERE OBSCURED WITH CLOUDS & RAIN, THE ACFT DISAPPEARED. WHEN THE ACFT DID NOT ARRIVE AT ITS DESTINATION, A SEARCH WAS BEGUN WHICH LASTED 9 DAYS, BUT THE ACFT WAS NOT FOUND AT THAT TIME. HOWEVER, THE WRECKAGE WAS DISCOVERED ON 8/28/84 WHERE IT HAD CRASHED AT AN ELEVATION OF 3300 FT MSL. ON THE DATE OF THE ACCIDENT, THE AREA FORCAST FOR THE VICINITY OF THE CRASH SITE WAS FOR BROKEN TO OVERCAST CLOUDS AT 2000 TO 3000 FT MSL WITH TOPS AT 16,000 FT. AN EXAM OF THE CRASH SITE REVEALED THAT THE ACFT HAD IMPACTED IN A STEEP RIGHT BANK, SLIGHTLY NOSE LOW ATTITUDE. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION WAS FOUND.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX84FA460
- Event ID
- 20001214X39298
- Case number
- LAX84FA460
- 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: 61f32089f679d797cb67f771e0a29f884849ea308bba1f5def700328d82658e2; retrieved 2026-09-21T05:34:29.840Z.