LAX08FA261 · Cessna 172S
Advantage Aviation Cessna 172S · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Palo Alto Airport (PAO) to Reno Tahoe International Airport (RNO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08FA261
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172S
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N15963
- Operator
- Advantage Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, CATo Reno Tahoe International Airport (RNO), Reno, 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot initiated a 160-nautical-mile night cross-country flight without approval from his flight instructor for the intended purpose of gambling at a casino. Radar data and wreckage distribution were consistent with the airplane making a gradual controlled descent from cruise flight and impacting mountainous terrain on a direct course toward the intended destination. No preimpact anomalies were noted during examination of the airframe and engine. The pilot's total flight time was approximately 97 hours, of which 19 hours were solo. His total night flight time was 1.8 hours dual instruction, which took place during a single flight on the night before the accident. He had made solo cross-country flights to airports less than 50 nautical miles from his home airport, but had not yet received training in cross-country flight planning. Toxicological testing revealed that the pilot, a physician diagnosed with substance dependence, had been using cocaine and taking two prescription medications (lamotrigine and quetiapine) often used in the treatment of bipolar disorder, as well as a prescription antidepressant (fluoxetine), though the levels detected indicated he had not used cocaine within 24 hours of the accident and had likely recently discontinued use of the medications. Additionally, the testing detected buprenorphine, a prescription narcotic medication, at a level consistent with the chronic use of the medication for treating opioid dependence. The pilot had been treated on multiple occasions for substance dependence and abuse. The relatively recent use of a stimulant (cocaine), recent discontinuation of prescription medications, gambling, and the apparent intent to fly cross-country at night while a student pilot without approval from his instructor all are actions consistent with the pilot being in a manic episode of bipolar disorder at the time of the accident. It is also possible that he was experiencing some cognitive impairment as a result of his use of buprenorphine for the treatment of substance dependence.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to initiate a flight for which he was neither approved nor qualified and his failure to maintain terrain clearance during the flight. Contributing to the accident were the dark night, the mountainous terrain, and the pilot's medical condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08FA261
- Event ID
- 20080821X01272
- Case number
- LAX08FA261
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-08-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ece42238b69af267196025e844f2dd06da6a82e2cf5a2c409058c00f789ef245; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:22:45.740Z.