LAX04FA081 · Cessna 150J
Cessna 150J · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Corona Municipal Airport (KAJO) to Zamperini Field (KTOA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04FA081
- 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
Cessna 150J
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 150
- 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
- N61303
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corona Municipal Airport (KAJO), Corona, CATo Zamperini Field (KTOA), Torrance, 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)
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot and his passenger took off in the single engine airplane in early morning fog and low overcast, and crashed 528 yards from the departure end of the runway. The airplane was located 14 days later in the wooded marshland off of the departure end of the runway. Local weather observations reported that the visibility at the time of departure was less than one-half mile in fog, and the vertical visibility (ceiling) was 100 feet. The pilot obtained a standard weather briefing prior to departure, which included the low visibilities and ceilings. The pilot did not document any instrument flying experience. The post accident examination of the airplane revealed no mechanical abnormalities.
Probable cause
The student pilot's intentional VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions, and his failure to maintain aircraft control as a result of spatial disorientation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04FA081
- Event ID
- 20040106X00022
- Case number
- LAX04FA081
- 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: b950c3a67e33abe8e393606a4c13029b1ca4f3f437c6303275481c67e66d10ef; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:42:47.380Z.