LAX83FA047 · Cessna 172N
Cal Aero Flying Club Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Palm Springs International Airport (PSP) to McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX83FA047
- 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
- 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
- Visual 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
- N737LA
- Operator
- Cal Aero Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Springs International Airport (PSP), Palm Springs, CATo McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, 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
- 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
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
DURING THE PREFLIGHT WX BRIEFING FROM THERMAL FSS THE PLT WAS ADVISED THAT VFR FLT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED INTO THE SAN DIEGO AREA. ALTHOUGH THE PLT REQUESTED A BRIEFING TO SAN DIEGO, IT IS BELIEVED THAT THE INITIAL DESTINATION WAS CARLSBAD TO DEPLANE THE REAR SEAT PAX. THE ACFT IMPACTED A MOUNTAIN JUST BELOW THE CREST AT 8,000 FT MSL. VFR FLT FOLLOWING HAD BEEN TERMINATED ABOUT 6 MIN PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT. ACCORDING TO THE NTSB METEOROLOGICAL SUMMARY, THERE WERE PROBABLY CONTINUOUS CLOUD CONDITIONS FROM 1,000 FT MSL TO NEAR 9,000 FT MSL WITH FLT VISIBILITY OF ZERO IN THE CLOUDS. MOUNTAINS WERE PROBABLY OBSCURED. THERE WAS THE POSSIBILITY OF LIGHT TO MODERATE TURBULENCE & UP & DOWN DRAFTS BELOW 10,000 FT MSL AS WELL AS MIXED MODERATE ICING IN CLOUDS NEAR 9,000 FT MSL.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX83FA047
- Event ID
- 20020917X04794
- Case number
- LAX83FA047
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1982-11-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 423acea6558418036e8ce21fc3f69bf2c87132979fe90d900987e69c9c8007ab; retrieved 2026-09-21T07:27:36.923Z.