LAX02LA066 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Q68 · Pine Mountain, CA to Mefford Field (TLR)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA066
- 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
Piper PA-28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N3624R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q68 · Pine Mountain, CATo Mefford Field (TLR), Tulare, 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 › Planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, improper
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 a vehicle while attempting to make a precautionary landing on a highway. When the pilot arrived in the destination area he was confronted with a low stratus cloud condition. He diverted to another airport and landed. He contacted an operator at the destination, who told him that there were visual flight operations there with cloud bases about 1,500 to 2,000 feet. He departed the diversionary airport and proceeded towards his destination. Unable to descend through or maneuver around the stratus, he returned to the original diversionary airport, which was now covered by the stratus deck, as were other local airports. Realizing he was now too low on fuel to reach an airport in visual conditions, he contacted Oakland Air Traffic Control Center and requested assistance. The center provided vectors towards airports, but due to the weather conditions, the pilot was unable to find the airports. The consensus was to land the airplane as soon as possible and before fuel exhaustion. The pilot spotted a forestry camp with a windsock near a highway. He was successful in landing on the highway; however, the highway had a curve that prevented him from seeing an on-coming vehicle. He attempted to avoid the vehicle but the wing tip clipped it, causing him to lose control and collide with trees.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper preflight planning and improper weather evaluation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA066
- Event ID
- 20020117X00086
- Case number
- LAX02LA066
- 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: 9441f008a059cb7aab5d387ee717591b5bdc321474da5da1bf5b0c46ba532965; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:42:28.453Z.