LAX03LA271 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Madera Municipal Airport (MAE) to Watsonville Municipal Airport (WVI)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA271
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20C
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M20
- 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
- N707JH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Madera Municipal Airport (MAE), Madera, CATo Watsonville Municipal Airport (WVI), Watsonville, 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 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- 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 airplane collided with trees and terrain while the pilot was searching for the airport in instrument metrological conditions (IMC). Prior to departure, the non-instrument rated pilot programmed the flight's intended route into the moving map display of the onboard global positioning system (GPS), as a means to navigate. After passing over mountains located to the east of the airport, the pilot observed the ground to be obscured by fog. The pilot continued further west, maneuvering the airplane over Monterey bay and then circled back to the east toward the airport. While en route, the pilot was searching for the lights on the golf driving range, located about 1/2 mile west of the airport. He was unable to see the lights, and the airplane impacted mountainous terrain, coming to rest in an oak tree. Several minutes before the accident weather reports indicated overcast ceilings of 300 feet above ground level with a visibility of 7 miles.
Probable cause
the non-instrument rated pilot's intentional continuance of VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions and failure to maintain clearance with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA271
- Event ID
- 20030905X01474
- Case number
- LAX03LA271
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-08-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9583a9f376a3d0e2725a527f58574c387627d4b345b49b04bcab4204e86435b8; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:23:42.352Z.