LAX03LA276 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Marin County Airport - Gnoss Field (DVO) to Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA276
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20K
- 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
- N252AK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Marin County Airport - Gnoss Field (DVO), Novato, CATo Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK), Oakland, 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
- Initial climb
- 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); Tree(s)
- 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 › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the initial climb-out the airplane collided with trees off the departure end of the runway. The pilot had filed an instrument Flight Rules flight plan, but decided to fly according to Visual Flight Rules to his destination airport. He indicated that it was still dark outside for the early morning flight. The pilot said that during the initial climb-out he lost visual reference with the ground due to the lack of ground lights and a visible horizon. He activated the autopilot; however, the airplane was not climbing as expected. As he was trying to figure out what the problem was the stall warning activated, he disengaged the autopilot, and attempted to lower the nose. The airplane simultaneously collided with trees. Weather in the accident site at the time of the accident was reported by witnesses to be 1/8-mile visibility with overcast clouds at 100 feet. The pilot stated that there were no mechanical anomalies noted with the airplane. According to the US Naval Observatory, sunrise for the date and location of the accident was at 0541.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to attempt VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions during the dark early morning takeoff, which resulted in spatial disorientation and lead to a collision with trees off the departure end of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA276
- Event ID
- 20030909X01499
- Case number
- LAX03LA276
- 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: dadbe4805630f696906723de64a622cc792367ab07c24f5983eac662b8b92897; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:36:40.980Z.