LAX06FA206 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Pegasus Airpark (5AZ3) to Payson Airport (PAN)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06FA206
- 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
- 4 · 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N1535C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Pegasus Airpark (5AZ3), Queen Creek, AZTo Payson Airport (PAN), Payson, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Low altitude flight/maneuver, intentional
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 was on a cross-country flight to a remote dirt airstrip that he had been to several times before. A friend of the pilot was at the airstrip and saw the accident airplane approach from the south, and then fly over the airstrip about 150 feet above ground level. The friend looked away, but reported that he was aware of the engine sounds, which were not unusual and did not draw his attention. The friend heard a "thud" and the engine sounds stropped. He looked up and saw the airplane cartwheel on the west side of a pinnacle, north of the airstrip. The debris field was about 50 feet below the crest of the hill, and continued along a magnetic bearing of 045 degrees. Calculations indicated that the sun was 11 degrees above the horizon, and the magnetic bearing to the sun was 56 degrees. The pilot was turning into the sun, and the shadow side of the pinnacle just prior to impact. Glare from the sun likely affected his vision, and his ability to discern the terrain's proximity. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation of the airframe or engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the terrain during a low level flyby maneuver. A factor was glare from the sun and shadows created by the mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06FA206
- Event ID
- 20060705X00867
- Case number
- LAX06FA206
- 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: d2c4341c01dd4c389680d8a6799f1c5cb44589d30003f74451ee0b2976da862f; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:17:33.592Z.