LAX05LA144 · Bishop RV6A
Bishop RV6A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM) to Benson Municipal Airport/Paul Kerchum Field (E95)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA144
- 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
Bishop RV6A
- Aircraft type
- Bishop RV6
- 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
- N426BB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM), San Diego, CATo Benson Municipal Airport/Paul Kerchum Field (E95), Benson, AZ
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a daytime cross-country flight, the airplane collided with upsloping mountainous terrain while in controlled flight and in instrument meteorological conditions. The pilot had departed San Diego, California, in trail behind an acquaintance who was also flying an RV6 airplane. They intended to fly in a loose formation to Arizona, and were communicating with each other via the common air-to-air radio frequency. The lead airplane pilot, who was instrument rated, reported that during his climb scattered and broken clouds were observed, but he eventually climbed on top and had over 3 miles forward visibility. After not hearing from the accident pilot for several minutes, the lead pilot returned to the departure airport, and a search was initiated. The accident pilot was not instrument rated. The accident airplane was found to have crashed about 0.5 miles north of the peak of the Otay Mountain, about 6.7 miles east of the departure airport. The initial point of impact elevation was 2,770 feet mean sea level (msl), and the peak elevation of the mountain was 3,566 feet msl. The departure airport, elevation 526 feet msl, reported its weather, in part, as 10 miles visibility, broken ceiling at 1,600 feet above ground level (agl), and overcast at 2,300 feet agl. An examination of the accident site revealed an estimated 150-foot-long ground swath leading to the main wreckage, which was fragmented and upside down. No evidence of any preimpact malfunction was found. The ground scar was consistent with the airplane having impacted the estimated 15-degree upsloping terrain while in a near wings level flight attitude. A global positioning satellite receiver was found in the wreckage. The last recorded elevation data on the GPS was 2,393 feet msl. The airplane's last position recorded by FAA radar was 3.8 miles west of the crash site, and its last position recorded by GPS was 1.9 miles west of the crash site. The airplane's track, from takeoff to impact, was principally in an easterly direction toward the pilot's destination in Arizona.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in an in-flight collision with rising mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA144
- Event ID
- 20050503X00540
- Case number
- LAX05LA144
- 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: a90adaf584f528e32849c6001ad501cc8438af58154a27c4d66f4f2777986ee9; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:08:26.532Z.