LAX01FA194 · Cessna 210A
Cessna 210A · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From RMN · Ramona, CA to Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01FA194
- 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
- 3 · 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 210A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 210
- 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
- N9462X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From RMN · Ramona, CATo Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT), Fresno, 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Lack of recent instrument time
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane departed the Ramona airport approximately 1140. It was radar identified by the air traffic controller, who then instructed the pilot to climb and maintain 6,000 feet msl. The controller told the pilot to make a left turn and proceed to the Oceanside VOR. The pilot acknowledged the instructions. The airplane then made a right turn to a heading of approximately 040 degrees at 4,300 feet msl. The controller requested that the pilot fly a heading of 270 degrees and to climb to 7,000 feet msl. The pilot acknowledged the radar vector. The airplane then made a steep 320-degree turn to the left, stopping on a heading of approximately 360 degrees at an altitude of 4,800 feet msl. The controller asked the pilot to continue his right turn to a heading of 290 degrees for radar vectors to victor airway 186. Then the controller asked the pilot to say altitude. A response from another pilot onboard the airplane said, "standby, we're in a little trouble here." The controller made two subsequent calls to the accident airplane. The pilot-in-command replied, "uh, six two x-ray standby a second." The controller issued a warning that the airplane was heading for higher terrain and instructed the pilot to turn left and climb. There was no response from the pilot. The airplane began a steep left turn from an altitude of 4,700 feet msl and turned left to a heading of approximately 180 degrees, descending from 4,700 feet msl to 2,500 feet msl, and then back up to 3,100 feet msl. At 1148:39, radar contact was lost with the airplane. According to the pilot's logbook, he had logged a total of 12.6 hours in 1999, 5.6 hours in 2000, and 11.5 hours in 2001. For the 3 years indicated, he had logged a total of 0.7 hours in instrument meteorological conditions. There was no evidence of an instrument proficiency check having been completed within the 12 calendar months prior to the accident. No instrument flight experience had been logged within the 12 calendar months preceding the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's spatial disorientation and lack of instrument flight proficiency that resulted in a loss of directional control and the airplane's subsequent in-flight collision with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01FA194
- Event ID
- 20010531X01044
- Case number
- LAX01FA194
- 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: 2cd8b5afd95a46f82ffa1d95fc51cd5774754bf6ee8bf64cdf600bead738fee9; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:31:57.454Z.