LAX01LA149 · Cessna 172B
Cessna 172B · Accident: forced landing en route
From Camarillo International Airport (CMA) to LOO · Rosamond, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA149
- 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
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172B
- 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
- N4672L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Camarillo International Airport (CMA), Camarillo, CATo LOO · Rosamond, 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
- Forced landing
- 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 › Maneuver, delayed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Lancaster, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot attempted to climb the airplane into rising terrain in a box canyon. Surface wind at 18 knots with gusts to 24 knots formed a downdraft on the lee side of a ridge forming one side of the canyon. The density altiude was 5,000 feet. The pilot reported the aircraft "experienced involuntary descent" and despite full engine power the aircraft was "unable to gain/maintain altiude resulting in [a] forced landing." He also reported he "put in a little flap to keep from settling." No mechanical anomalies were found with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's delay reversing course while flying toward rising terrain in a box canyon. Factors in the accident included a downdraft on the lee side of a ridge forming the box canyon, high density altitude, and the pilot's improper use of flaps.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA149
- Event ID
- 20010420X00786
- Case number
- LAX01LA149
- 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. 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: c23245ce66cd2a02a21487c88426efe9e64e87238dab52e037a559ed2c52e9e3; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:09:49.313Z.