LAX83LA450 · Cessna 182
Cessna 182 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From San Carlos Airport (SQL) to P37 · Glendale, AZ
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX83LA450
- 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 182
- 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
- N5437B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Carlos Airport (SQL), San Carlos, CATo P37 · Glendale, AZ
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT REPORTED THAT HE WAS FLYING UNDER A 2000 FT MSL CLOUD LAYER WHILE EN ROUTE FROM SAN CARLOS, CA TO GLENDALE, AZ. HE FLEW INTO A VALLEY & THE CLOUDS BEGAN CLOSING IN. HE THEN MADE A 180 DEG TURN, BUT THE CLOUDS HAD CLOSED IN BEHIND HIM. HE ATTEMPTED A PRECAUTIONARY LANDING ON A ROAD IN THE JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL MONUMENT. HOWEVER, DURING THE ROLL-OUT, THE LEFT WING OF THE ACFT CONTACTED A JOSHUA TREE & THE ACFT WAS SUBSTANTIALLY DAMAGED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX83LA450
- Event ID
- 20001214X44601
- Case number
- LAX83LA450
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 38aab31d80c1698a63f0e5686c05ab06c75412d289546a9a8b06dc54d6c2804c; retrieved 2026-09-22T02:28:56.542Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states "THE LEFT WING OF THE ACFT CONTACTED A JOSHUA TREE & THE ACFT WAS SUBSTANTIALLY DAMAGED" during the roll-out of a precautionary landing on a road.