LAX04FA061 · Piper PA-28R-200
Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Long Beach International Airport (LGB) to Corona Municipal Airport (AJO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04FA061
- 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
- 2 · 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
Piper PA-28R-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N16264
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Beach International Airport (LGB), Long Beach, CATo Corona Municipal Airport (AJO), Corona, 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 · 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- 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 mountainous terrain at the 1,400-foot level during a night visual flight rules (VFR) flight in weather conditions that included a 1,500-foot overcast ceiling and a visibility of 2 miles in fog. There was no record that the noninstrument rated pilot requested or received a weather briefing. The departure and destination airports are separated by a range of low hills, which rise to 1,781 feet mean sea level (msl). Recorded radar data disclosed that while flying over the low-lying coastal plain the airplane maintained a relatively steady course and speed. Near the accident site and the hilly terrain, the airplane performed a series of S-turns, then two 360-degree left turns, followed by another series of S-turns. The airplane was in the process of another left 360-degree turn when the target disappeared very close to the ground impact point.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision by which he conducted VFR flight into night instrument meteorological conditions. Mountainous terrain, dark night conditions and the pilot's failure to obtain a preflight weather briefing are contributing factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04FA061
- Event ID
- 20031212X02024
- Case number
- LAX04FA061
- 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 2003-12-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f137129f1f69429022e3b8ea4a8f22a3d7d3ad5655fb21080aaf876cfc26dbed; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:44:15.653Z.