LAX01LA110 · Jones RV-6A
Jones RV-6A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Zamperini Field (TOA) to Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA110
- 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
Jones RV-6A
- Aircraft type
- Jones RV-6
- 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
- N46KA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Zamperini Field (TOA), Torrance, CATo Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH), Mammoth Lakes, 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
- 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 › Carburetor heat, delayed
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, performed
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, delayed
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The amateur-built, airplane impacted mountainous terrain in dark night conditions after experiencing a loss of engine power while in cruise flight at 13,000 feet. The airline transport pilot obtained a weather briefing prior to departing on a visual flight rules (VFR) flight. During the briefing, the pilot was advised that VFR flight was not recommended and that flight precautions existed for icing conditions above 7,000 feet, the potential for mountain obscurement, cloud layers predominant through the route of flight and the chance of widespread rain. The pilot reported experiencing weather during his flight and the air traffic controller asked him if they wanted to continue in instrument flight conditions (IMC). The pilot stated he would like to continue in IMC and indicated if he encountered icing conditions he would "ask for a 180" and divert to another airport. Later during the flight, the pilot told the air traffic controller he was encountering snow. He called the controller again and reported he was experiencing a rough running engine and that he wanted to divert to a nearby airport and declare an emergency. The controller then issued radar vectors to the airport. The pilot continued to ask for and received terrain information as he descended past 5,000 feet. Radar data and communications were then lost. The airplane was found on the side of a mountain ridge at 4,700 feet.
Probable cause
the in-flight collision with mountainous terrain during a forced landing following a loss of engine power resulting from the pilot's inadequate weather evaluation, continued flight into icing weather conditions, his delay in carburetor heat use, and his delay in diverting to an alternate airport.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA110
- Event ID
- 20010308X00560
- Case number
- LAX01LA110
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-03-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d5a90ec3ebc87f21d3be3377c4d6bd3fa13510e957be9e180652df43d98c7af4; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:38:26.057Z.