LAX82FA070 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ) to Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX82FA070
- 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
- 0
- 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 172N
- 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
- N733ZR
- Operator
- Daniel W Capehart · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CATo Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ), Albuquerque, NM
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DRG WX BRIEFINGS AT 1024 & 1247 THE PLT WAS ADVISED THAT VFR FLT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED DUE TO LOW CEILINGS & ICING CONDITIONS. AT ABOUT 1418 THE ACFT DEPARTED. AT 1439 THE PLT CONTACTED FLIGHT WATCH (FW) & REPORTED PICKING UP LEADING EDGE ICE 6.4 MI EAST OF THE JULIAN VOR. AT 1443 THE PLT REQUESTED A HEADING BACK TO PALOMAR. FW ADVISED THE PLT THAT FW DOES NOT HAVE DF STEER CAPABILITY & TO CONTACT SAN DIEGO RADIO. THIS TRANSMISSION WAS NOT ACKNOWLEDGED & THERE WERE NO FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS. THE CRASH SITE ELEVATION WAS ABOUT 3,500 FT MSL. THE 1456 SURFACE WX OBSERVATION AT GILLESPIE FLD, EL CAJON, CA, LOCATED ABOUT 25 NM SW OF THE ACCIDENT SITE REPORTED A BROKEN CLOUD CEILING EQUATING TO 1,885 FT MSL. THE PLT'S FIANCE STATED THAT THE PLT WAS ANXIOUS TO RETURN TO ALBUQUERQUE TO CLEAR UP HIS BUSINESS AFFAIRS & RETURN FOR THEIR PENDING MARRIAGE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX82FA070
- Event ID
- 20020917X02263
- Case number
- LAX82FA070
- 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: 080b040a3c8ceadac90a289a43065da2f35875dac7503d2870bd79271047a77d; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:37:44.235Z.