LAX03FA166 · Rockwell 114
Rockwell 114 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL) to John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03FA166
- 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
- 4 · 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
Rockwell 114
- Aircraft type
- Rockwell 114
- 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
- N4730W
- Operator
- Steven D. Meissel · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL), South LakeTahoe, CATo John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA), Santa Ana, 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
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Airspeed, inadequate
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 upsloping, high mountainous terrain at an elevation of 12,660 feet mean sea level while maneuvering low to the terrain and below the tops of the peaks and ridge lines west of the accident site. Ground scars and crush deformation to the airplane is consistent with the airplane colliding with the ground in a stall/mush descent. The pilot had departed South Lake Tahoe for an intended nonstop flight to a Southern California airport. As documented by 81digital photographs taken by a passenger, the route of flight included flying over the Yosemite National Park and other scenic areas the Sierra Nevada mountains. En route scattered high clouds were predominant and the weather reports showed benign conditions over the area of the accident. The last few pictures taken by the passenger near the accident site showed the airplane generally flying in a southeasterly direction and at elevations below that of the surrounding mountains. Following the airplane's departure, there were no communications or services provided by any FAA facility. The accident occurred after the airplane had been flying for 1.9 hours. No evidence of any radar track consistent with the airplane's course was found in the vicinity of the accident site. The lowest altitude at which a target is visible on radar in the vicinity of the accident site is 13,300 feet. The wreckage was found on a Sierra Nevada mountain plateau, oriented in an easterly direction facing lower elevation terrain. One mile east of the accident site, over the edge of the plateau, the elevation decreased to about 11,300 feet msl. About 10 miles farther east, the elevation decreased to about 4,900 feet msl. The airplane was equipped with a normally aspirated, 260-horsepower engine, and with reduced gross weight the airplane could climb to a service ceiling of 15,000 feet. The density altitude at the accident site was also about 15,000 feet. No evidence of any mechanical malfunction was found during the wreckage examination.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain an adequate airspeed while maneuvering close to the ground over mountainous terrain in a high density altitude environment near the upper performance capability of the airplane, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/mush into the terrain. Contributing factors were the pilot's improper in-flight decision to fly low over high elevation, upsloping mountainous terrain, and the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03FA166
- Event ID
- 20030603X00762
- Case number
- LAX03FA166
- 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: a897d499da36d2b40111b4687f48b09620468428aaaa8a009b9e975d30061e4a; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:13:27.328Z.