LAX02LA258 · Cessna 185A
Cessna 185A · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT) to Santa Paula Airport (SZP)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA258
- 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 185A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N4145Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT), Fresno, CATo Santa Paula Airport (SZP), Santa Paula, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- 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 pilot made a precautionary landing in a riverbed after impacting a hill while in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The pilot departed on a visual flight rules cross-country flight after checking the weather at the local destination area. According to the pilot, he was aware of the broken and overcast cloud layers at his destination but thought that the conditions would improve by the time of his arrival. Upon arrival at the destination airport, he entered instrument conditions and initiated a climb in an attempt to climb out of the clouds. The airplane impacted a hill and the emergency locator transmitter activated. He later noticed that his landing gear was missing. He elected to make a precautionary landing in a riverbed instead of attempting to land at his original destination airport. The weather observation facilities in the vicinity of the destination airport were reporting IMC throughout the morning of the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in the in-flight collision with terrain during a climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA258
- Event ID
- 20020829X01487
- Case number
- LAX02LA258
- 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: 1f7e304a7bc1c75bda94b6aef5558eeb89e75e6e23a921599747747ac1e5d6a3; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:29:29.760Z.