LAX08FA002 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Long Beach International Airport (LGB) to Henderson Executive Airport (HND)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08FA002
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N6549W
- Operator
- Raymond E. Roessler · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Beach International Airport (LGB), Long Beach, CATo Henderson Executive Airport (HND), Las Vegas, NV
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- 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
During cruise flight in dark night conditions, the pilot stated to air traffic control that he was at 3,700 feet over the freeway interchange at the base of a mountain pass. The pilot transmitted to the controller that he could not climb because he had clouds above him that he could not climb through. The accident site was at the summit of the pass at an approximate elevation of 4,196 feet. A deputy sheriff was traversing the pass in the area of the accident site just prior to the accident and he noted heavy fog and very limited visibility at the top of the pass. As he proceeded down the hill, the visibility improved as he dropped below the clouds and he observed an airplane flying up toward the pass. Ground scars and impact signatures were consistent with controlled flight into terrain. Investigators found no anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into instrument meteorological conditions and failure to maintain terrain clearance during cruise flight. Contributing to the accident were mountainous terrain, dark night, and fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08FA002
- Event ID
- 20071017X01608
- Case number
- LAX08FA002
- 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: c1064fd2e56e99a31b66f43646c63978ebb9a44d83f65fb666b280f989787269; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:13:28.890Z.