LAX83LA052 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL) to Placerville Airport (PVF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX83LA052
- 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
- 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 172M
- 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
- N20016
- Operator
- Manual Amaral
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL), South Lake Tahoe, CATo Placerville Airport (PVF), Placerville, 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Weather condition › Downdraft
- Weather condition › Mountain wave
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
THE STUDENT PILOT AND A PASSENGER DEPARTED THE SOUTH LAKE TAHOE AIRPORT AT 1515 PST. HE STATED THAT HE HAD CLIMBED TO ABOUT 1200 FT AGL WHEN HE ENCOUNTERED EXTREME TURBULENCE AND DOWNDRAFTS. HE LOST CONTROL OF THE AIRCRAFT UNTIL JUST PRIOR TO GROUND IMPACT. A HELICOPTER PILOT THAT WAS IN THE AREA JUST AFTER THE ACCIDENT ALSO REPORTED MODERATE TO SEVERE TURBULENCE. THE DEPARTURE AIRPORT WAS AT AN ELEVATION OF 6264 FT MSL NEAR MOUNTAINS. THE AIRCRAFT WAS EQUIPPED WITH LIGHTS TO DISPLAY COMMERCIAL ADVERTISEMENTS AT NIGHT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX83LA052
- Event ID
- 20020917X04866
- Case number
- LAX83LA052
- 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: f0e1051d80e2931e4bfa0a6297dca9ee06c4fe321447692bda4594af12e9482d; retrieved 2026-09-22T02:49:41.839Z.