LAX04FA139 · Piper PA-28R-180
Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From KLBG · Long Beach, CA to Sacramento Executive Airport (SAC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04FA139
- 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
- 1 · 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-180
- 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
- N7687J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From KLBG · Long Beach, CATo Sacramento Executive Airport (SAC), Sacramento, 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
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 during a night cross-country flight while trying to avoid inclement weather. The pilot had recently received his private pilot's certificate and did not possess an instrument rating. AIRMET's were issued for turbulence, icing, and mountain obscuration in the vicinity of the pilot's route of flight for the period between 1845 and 0100 Pacific time. There is no record that the pilot requested or received a weather briefing. Radar data and ATC communications tapes shows the airplane left the departure airport at 1939, and eventually took a northerly heading toward the mountains that separate the coastal plain from an inland valley. It paralleled an interstate highway, and leveled off at 9,500 feet. Over the last mountain pass before entering the inland valley (elevation: 4,239 feet), the airplane diverted to the west, and climbed to 10,000 feet. The pilot checked in with ATC at 10,000 feet and requested visual flight rules (VFR) flight following and an altitude of 10,500 feet. The elevation of the mountainous terrain to the west of the pass ranges from 5,000 feet in the valley to mountain peaks and ridges between 7,000 feet and 8,840 feet to the north and south. The pilot confirmed with ATC that he was diverting to the west for cloud avoidance. The pilot then requested a descent to 8,500 feet. ATC approved the descent at the pilot discretion and advised him to maintain VFR. As the airplane proceeded west, radar recorded the altitude decreasing through 9,000 feet at a rate of descent of 1,100 feet per minute. The pilot continued his descent and requested 4,500 feet. ATC advised the pilot that he was in the vicinity of high terrain. The pilot said he could see the ground but he didn't have good (forward) visibility and requested a vector (to clearer weather). ATC advised him to adjust his heading northbound towards lower terrain, that he was below the minimum vectoring altitude, and to maintain VFR. The pilot responded by saying he could see pretty well and would take a northbound heading. The last radar beacon target reported an altitude of 7,100 feet. No further communications with the pilot were established. The airplane impacted a mountain slope at an elevation of 6,683 feet and on a heading of about 350 degrees magnetic. There were no preimpact airplane mechanical anomalies identified during the investigation.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued visual flight into adverse weather conditions at night, which resulted in an in-flight collision with mountainous terrain. The pilot's failure to obtain preflight weather information for the route of flight was also causal.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04FA139
- Event ID
- 20040308X00291
- Case number
- LAX04FA139
- 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 2004-02-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0bddc9734722ea34ff8e7552f698468c7fbbef94c58fe376f2f492bc2c5de295; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:31:59.785Z.