LAX85FA088 · Cessna 182Q
West Valley Flying Club Cessna 182Q · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Palo Alto Airport (PAO) to John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX85FA088
- 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
- 4 · 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
- Unknown
Cessna 182Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N735MJ
- Operator
- West Valley Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, CATo John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA), Santa Ana, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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 › Altitude, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE INSTRUMENT RATED PLT & 3 PAX DEPARTED PALO ALTO FOR AN INTENDED 3-HOUR LONG DAY VFR FLT TO SANTA ANA, CA. THE FINAL DESTINATION WAS TO BE MX. THE PLT HAD NOT FLOWN AT NIGHT OR ON INSTRUMENTS IN OVER 6 YRS. HE ELECTED TO DELAY DEPARTING PAO UNTIL 1611 PST DUE TO FORECAST MARGINAL WEATHER. THE PLT DID NOT COMMUNICATE WITH ATC OR FSS WHILE EN ROUTE & UPON ARRIVAL IN SOUTHERN CA, AT NIGHT, MARGINAL VFR WX WAS ENCOUNTERED. A LOCALIZED AREA OF MODERATE TO HEAVY RAIN EXISTED OVER UPLAND, APRX 28 MILES NORTH OF SNA. THE ACFT WAS OBSERVED TO CIRCLE CABLE ARPT. WHEN SOUTH OF THE ARPT AND FLYING ON A NORTHERLY HEADING AT CRUISE SPEED, IT DESCENDED AND CRASHED INTO AN UNPOPULATES AND DARK AREA OF LEVEL TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX85FA088
- Event ID
- 20001214X41813
- Case number
- LAX85FA088
- 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 1984-12-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: cfa2d6c0c0280ebfda50056efa8ff73ade71183bfd8c63be3bb52bfe7e38f6d0; retrieved 2026-09-21T05:11:13.153Z.