LAX06FA148 · Cessna T337C
Cessna T337C · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From General William J Fox Airfield (WJF) to Gillespie Field (SEE)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06FA148
- 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
- 2 · 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 T337C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 337
- 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
- N2620S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From General William J Fox Airfield (WJF), Lancaster, CATo Gillespie Field (SEE), San Diego, 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed under visual flight rules (VFR) for a planned cross country flight over mountainous terrain. During the climb to cruise phase, the pilot requested and received VFR radar flight following service. He also requested from the controller a cloud top report. The controller replied that he did not have a report for the geographic area. Radar data showed that the pilot continued climbing in a southerly direction toward rising mountainous terrain until reaching 10,200 feet msl. Then, over the next few minutes the airplane gradually descended and made a left, 270-degree turn. The pilot informed the controller that he had gotten himself "in the soup" and was trying "to get out of it." The controller advised the pilot that the minimum vectoring altitude for the area was 11,600 feet. No response was received from the pilot. The radar data showed that during this time the airplane descended and impacted a mountaintop near the 8,000-foot msl elevation. A skier, who was located less than 3/4-mile from the accident site at 7,000 feet msl, reported hearing the sound of an engine which abruptly stopped with a "thud" sound. The skier reported he was unable to see the sky because the clouds covered the mountaintop. An examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal evidence of any mechanical malfunction. The ground scars and wreckage signatures showed the airplane was in controlled flight when the ground collision occurred.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to continue VFR flight into instrument meteorological weather conditions, which resulted in controlled flight into mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06FA148
- Event ID
- 20060508X00526
- Case number
- LAX06FA148
- 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: ab2416197a6aed96cad347184fe82c85224967f7a0e29e364ee4fecba0a8f23b; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:23:30.391Z.