LAX01FA070 · Cessna 172F
Cessna 172F · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From San Luis County Regional Airport (SBP) to Meadows Field (BFL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01FA070
- 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
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 172F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N383CA
- Operator
- William C. Bottoms · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Luis County Regional Airport (SBP), San Luis Obispo, CATo Meadows Field (BFL), 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 · 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Proper climb rate, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the instrument flight rules initial climb after takeoff, in fog, to visual conditions on top, the airplane collided with the ground about 1 mile from the departure runway. Prior to departure on runway 11, the pilot contacted the control tower to request the instrument departure to on-top and was advised to standby. During the course of communication the pilot was advised the "tops" were 300 feet above ground level, and was issued a clearance to taxi to the runway. The tower advised the pilot that they were closing and to contact ARTCC for release. The pilot obtained the IFR clearance and was released to on-top. The pilot's release included a standard instrument departure that required a right turn to 130 degrees after departure. There was no further communication with the pilot and radar contact was never established. The airplane subsequently collided with the ground, south of the runway, in a steep right wing down attitude on a magnetic heading of 180 degrees. Examination of the airplane wreckage did not reveal any system anomalies. The vacuum pump drive shear-shaft was found intact and there was rotational scoring of the attitude indictor gyroscope rotor.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain a proper climb rate to VFR conditions on-top.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01FA070
- Event ID
- 20010109X00070
- Case number
- LAX01FA070
- 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 2001-01-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c513de033d925a856e2f80398a3036f7cc08954dcaf8963bea5ab0d1fec50d2d; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:42:55.477Z.