LAX04LA092 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Napa County Airport (KAPC) to Nut Tree Airport (KVCB)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA092
- 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
Cessna 140
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N77S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Napa County Airport (KAPC), Napa, CATo Nut Tree Airport (KVCB), Vacaville, 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
- Fuel exhaustion; 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight briefing service, not used
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
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 experienced a loss of power and collided with a tree during a forced landing. Earlier in the day the pilot had flown from Vacaville to Napa, and the accident flight leg was to return to Vacaville. Prior to departure, the pilot calculated that he had about 1 hour's worth of fuel on board the airplane to complete the short 15-minute trip and leave a 45-minute reserve. As the airplane approached the vicinity of the destination airport in dark night conditions, the pilot obtained the automated weather observation station (AWOS) report and discovered that the weather conditions were deteriorating at the destination airport. When he arrived over the airport he noted that a fog layer had engulfed the airport and surrounding terrain. While maneuvering, the pilot exhausted both fuel tanks and the engine subsequently quit. He established a gliding configuration, and the airplane descended into the fog about 700 feet above ground level (agl). The airplane collided with a small tree and then encountered a berm. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector examined the airplane at the accident site and reported finding the left fuel tank empty; he drained 3 quarts of fuel from the right tank.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to either obtain a preflight weather report and forecast for the destination or to add additional fuel, which ultimately resulted in fuel exhaustion and collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA092
- Event ID
- 20040114X00062
- Case number
- LAX04LA092
- 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 2004-01-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2c02581b2046ace63978046626ecadfe8d8c233da11032cdfff31d8010a5e7c5; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:19:40.481Z.