WPR09FA034 · Piper PA-32S-300
Piper PA-32S-300 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From San Felipe International Airport (SFH) to Hesperia Airport (L26)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09FA034
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-32S-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N312AG
- Operator
- Douglas R. Bowles · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Felipe International Airport (SFH), BajaTo Hesperia Airport (L26), Hesperia, 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight departed in visual flight rule (VFR) flight conditions on a cross-country flight back to the pilot's home airport. About 35 miles southeast of the destination airport, the airplane impacted the northwest side of an 11,000-foot mountain approximately 150 feet below the mountain's crest. Based on an analysis of the meteorological conditions existing at the time of the accident and in the vicinity of the accident site, the cloud bases were near 7,000 feet with the cloud tops above 15,000 feet. An Airman's Information (AIRMET) report for icing and turbulence had been issued for the time of the accident, in the accident area. An airframe and engine inspection revealed no preimpact mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot had a history, known to the FAA, of an abnormal heart rhythm (atrial fibrillation) for which he was taking a blood thinner to reduce stroke risk, and a color vision deficiency. The accident forces prevented the evaluation of any pre-existing disease, and it is unclear what, if any, relevance the pilot’s cardiac abnormalities or color vision deficiency had to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into instrument meteorological conditions and subsequent impact with mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09FA034
- Event ID
- 20081110X70048
- Case number
- WPR09FA034
- 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: investigation status. 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: 08420a81cee20510db4129272bbe65c659d508ff082311a2e9f9ddad3451569e; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:48:58.269Z.