LAX05FA011 · Cessna 310K
Cessna 310K · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Kahului International Airport (OGG) to Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole (KOA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05FA011
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 310K
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N7049L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kahului International Airport (OGG), Kahului, HITo Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole (KOA), Kailua-Kona, HI
- 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 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › 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
About seven minutes after takeoff, the airplane impacted a volcanic mountain at the 3,750-foot level. Recorded radar data showed that after departure, the airplane made a turn towards the accident site, and made a steady climb to 3,600 feet on a heading of about 143 degrees. Radar data showed that the flight track was steady and level, and the last 2 minutes of flight were at 3,600 feet. Radio communications between the pilot and tower controllers were normal, and the pilot made no distress calls prior to the accident. The weather was clear beneath a high overcast, with a dark night, and no moon. Examination of the airframe revealed no discrepancies with the flight controls. Both engines were examined, with no mechanical anomalies noted that would have precluded normal operations, and abundant evidence of symmetrical power being developed at impact.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain adequate clearance from mountainous terrain during cruise flight. A factor in the accident was the dark night lighting conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05FA011
- Event ID
- 20041026X01697
- Case number
- LAX05FA011
- 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 2004-10-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a134d1dc3c1460f8a6a43ec2772f04f14dd12c4350e473875120d7e6f4e9f103; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:18:21.554Z.