LAX03LA294 · Cessna 172N
Skyschool Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Calvada Meadows Airport (NV74) to North Las Vegas Airport (VGT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA294
- 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
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
- N6548D
- Operator
- Skyschool
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Calvada Meadows Airport (NV74), Pahrump, NVTo North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), North Las Vegas, NV
- 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
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
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 rising terrain while maneuvering to gain altitude shortly after departure. After an uneventful departure, the airplane approached a mountain range, and the pilot opted to execute a 360-degree turn in an effort to gain altitude. While turning, he noticed a significant downdraft, and despite the continuous use of full throttle, the airplane was unable to climb. He attempted to maneuver the airplane to avoid contacting terrain, but the airplane descended about 250 feet per minute and impacted the terrain. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane. He thought that the accident could have been prevented if he had maneuvered the airplane away from mountainous terrain. With the temperature and pressure from the nearest reporting station, the density altitude was calculated to be in excess of 4,800 feet.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain altitude/clearance from the mountainous terrain while maneuvering, which resulted in an in-flight collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA294
- Event ID
- 20030924X01586
- Case number
- LAX03LA294
- 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: b4fdeab1fa04529f48cf102012aa8114bbc32f82f54fa25e2c0400e40cea33b3; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:29:20.453Z.