LAX05CA257 · Cessna A150M
Cessna A150M · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Trinity Center Airport (O86) to Weed Airport (O46)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05CA257
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna A150M
- 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
- N8166V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Trinity Center Airport (O86), Trinity Center, CATo Weed Airport (O46), Weed, 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 · climb to 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, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not selected
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 an en route climb on a course that took it into a box canyon. After a day of physical exertion, the pilot departed from the airport and headed for a pass in mountainous terrain. He noted that the temperature at the 2,390-foot mean sea level (msl) airport was about 90-degrees Fahrenheit. As he approached the pass, about 20 minutes into the flight, he realized that deceptively level-looking terrain below was in actuality the relatively steep walls of a narrowing canyon. The pilot noted the air becoming more turbulent and an increase in downdraft conditions. He attempted to maneuver the airplane out of the canyon, but did not have adequate altitude and made a forced landing onto a logging road, at an elevation of about 6,000 feet msl. Prior to touchdown, the left wing impacted a tree and the airplane subsequently landed hard on the road. The pilot egressed the airplane as it became engulfed in flames. The pilot reported no pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane. Using the standard lapse rate of 3-degrees Celsius per 1,000 feet of altitude, the density altitude was calculated to be about 8,600 feet at the accident site.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to select an adequate altitude, which would assure clearance from the mountainous terrain while flying into a box canyon in high density altitude conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05CA257
- Event ID
- 20050906X01392
- Case number
- LAX05CA257
- 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: 2ccc9a82b5e3b7229e04a555d9eb74bc3b36b9d8e9ab61f1053a89d82ff2c840; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:56:25.126Z.