LAX83FA091 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) to Zamperini Field (TOA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX83FA091
- 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
Cessna 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N1547H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, NVTo Zamperini Field (TOA), Torrance, 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
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT COLLIDED WITH A MOUNTAIN DURING A NIGHT CROSS-COUNTRY. THE WEATHER WAS VMC AT TAKEOFF BUT BECAME IMC LATER NEARTHE MOUNTAINS. A VFR FLIGHT PLAN WAS FILED BUT NEVER OPENED.THE PILOT CONTINUED FLIGHT INTO AN AREA OF KNOWN IMC CONDITIONS. HE HAD RETURNED TO LAS VEGAS ONCE AND ASKED FOR MORE WEATHER BRIEFING. SHORTLY AFTER HIS SECOND DEPARTURE, AT NIGHT HE ASKED FOR ATC HELP FOR SEPARATION THROUGH LAS VEGAS, CA. HE WAS OBSERVED CLIMBING IN HEAVY RAIN. ABOUT 15 MINUTES LATER AT 1226, HE REPORTED NAVIGATIONAL PROBLEMS. ATC GAVE HIM A HEADING FOR A RETURN. ATC PERSONNEL OBSERVED THAT THE AIRCRAFT COMMENCED A TURN WHICH TIGHTENED AND THEN THE TARGET DISAPPEARED FROM THE RADAR SCOPE. THE AIRCRAFT IMPACTED ABOUT 65 FT BELOW A RIDGE LINE AT AN ELEVATION OF ABOUT 3500 FT MSL. IT IMPACTED RISING TERRAIN WITH THE RIGHT WING FIRST, THE AIRCRAFT TRAVELED 58 FT UPSLOPE BEFORE COMING TO REST. MOUNTAIN TOPS IN THE AREA WERE OBSCURED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX83FA091
- Event ID
- 20001214X42222
- Case number
- LAX83FA091
- 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 1983-02-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a170d1dafa930408df328b8645c3a368f33b6bfbb7f9a99891ac3a4b4409829c; retrieved 2026-09-21T07:12:22.369Z.