LAX83FVA02 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Tonopah Airport (TPH) to 022 · Columbia, CA
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX83FVA02
- 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
- 0 · 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 150F
- 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
- N8463G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Tonopah Airport (TPH), Tonopah, NVTo 022 · Columbia, 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); Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, attempted
- Pilot in command › Judgment, poor
- Pilot in command › Preflight briefing service, disregarded
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT MADE TWO TELEPHONE CALLS TO THE FSS REQUESTING WX BRIEFINGS FOR A VFR FLT TO MEDFORD, OR. HE WAS PROVIDED WITH A SUMMARY OF THE CURRENT AND FORECAST WX FOR HIS ROUTE AND DESTINATION. HE WAS ADVISED THAT VFR FLT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THAT DAY. THE PILOT DID NOT FILE A FLT PLAN AND IT IS NOT KNOWN WHAT TIME HE DEPARTED. THE AIRCRAFT WAS REFUELED AT TONOPAH, NV AND NO FLT PLAN WAS FILED AND NO ETD KNOWN. THE AIRCRAFT CRASHED INTO A TREE AT APRX 20 FEET AGL. A WITNESS STATED THAT THE AIRCRAFT JUST BARELY CLEARED HIS HOUSETOP, HEAVY RAIN WAS FALLING AND ALL THE HILLS AT THE LEVEL OF HIS HOUSE WERE ENGULFED IN FOG.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX83FVA02
- Event ID
- 20001214X42472
- Case number
- LAX83FVA02
- 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 1983-03-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a3bdcece1e82c7d0c128ab5766273bdc70e6ca5ce6730927da41b989acaa4953; retrieved 2026-09-21T17:59:25.255Z.