LAX01FA112 · North American NAVION
North American NAVION · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Gillespie Field (SEE) to El Centro NAF Airport (Vraciu Field) (NJK)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01FA112
- 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
- 1 · 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
North American NAVION
- Aircraft type
- North American NAVION
- 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
- N91445
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gillespie Field (SEE), San Diego, CATo El Centro NAF Airport (Vraciu Field) (NJK), El Centro, 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)
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with terrain following an encounter with clouds and low ceilings. Two witnesses observed the airplane. One had been a licensed pilot. A loud engine sound caught their attention. The engine sounded like it was revving to a high rpm. The airplane sounded very low. They heard the sound for 2 or 3 seconds before they saw the airplane. It came out of clouds with the nose pointing down more than 75 degrees. They were looking north at the side of the airplane as it moved right to left. They did not observe any rotation of the airplane as it disappeared behind a ridgeline, and then they heard a muffled thud. The engine sound simultaneously ceased. They did not observe any pieces separate in flight. The weather was overcast and misting. A weather study indicated cloud tops were generally in the 4,000-foot range on the coast and increased to nearly 7,000 feet in the vicinity of the accident site. Several pilot reports indicated a broken to overcast layer of clouds with cloud tops ranging from 4,500 to 9,000 feet. Recorded radar data showed the airplane maintained a northeasterly track for nearly 20 minutes after takeoff. It then began a gradual left turn for 2 minutes. The target made a sharp left 90-degree turn, and then made a right turn. After 360 degrees, the right turn decreased in radius and continued for over 270 degrees until the last recorded target. This last target was near the accident site. The target reached a peak mode C reported altitude of 6,700 feet at the beginning of the first right turn. The last mode C reported altitude of 4,900 feet occurred about 180 degrees into the second right turn. The accident site elevation is about 2,800 feet msl. The pilot did not possess an instrument rating.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued VFR flight into IFR conditions, which resulted in a loss of control due to spatial disorientation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01FA112
- Event ID
- 20010319X00601
- Case number
- LAX01FA112
- 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: investigation status, coordinates. 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: 6531b3debf3b1c31050c763f24fbe2011d4c89d67c8c822d828424743efe1288; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:38:19.023Z.