WPR12FA154 · Cessna T182 T
Cessna T182 T · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP) to Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12FA154
- 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 T182 T
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N5201F
- Operator
- Dennis E Bazar · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP), Bullhead City, AZTo Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO), Santa Monica, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Physical
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After departing on a cross-country flight in night visual meteorological conditions, the pilot requested flight following from air traffic control. According to radar data, about 11 minutes after takeoff, the airplane leveled off at 14,800 feet mean sea level (msl). About 30 minutes later, when the airplane was still about 150 miles from its destination, air traffic controllers observed the airplane beginning to descend. When air traffic controllers subsequently questioned the pilot as to his intensions, the pilot’s responses were garbled and unintelligible. Radar data indicated that the airplane continued a meandering descent until it descended through about 11,000 feet msl and radar contact was lost. The airplane impacted terrain in a right-wing-low attitude, and the debris field extended about 830 feet.
Postaccident examination revealed no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The investigation revealed that the pilot had flown for about 40 minutes at altitudes exceeding 12,500 feet msl, with much of that time spent at 14,600 feet msl. At these altitudes, without the use of supplemental oxygen, the pilot would have become hypoxic (insufficient brain oxygen). Although the pilot’s wife indicated that he typically used supplemental oxygen when operating above 11,000 feet msl and supplemental oxygen was available to the pilot during the flight, postaccident investigation indicated that no cockpit oxygen ports were in use when the accident occurred.
The degree of hypoxia experienced by the pilot would have severely degraded his performance. Both the garbled transmissions to air traffic controllers and the airplane’s meandering flight path are consistent with the pilot experiencing symptomatic hypoxia. As the airplane descended during the last few minutes of the flight, the pilot’s oxygen saturation would have slowly improved; however, the rate of descent was likely too rapid to allow the pilot to recover his vision and judgment in time to prevent the accident.
Probable cause
The in-flight loss of control due to the pilot’s impairment as a result of hypoxia. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s operation of the airplane above 12,500 feet without the aid of supplemental oxygen.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12FA154
- Event ID
- 20120406X43139
- Case number
- WPR12FA154
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-04-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: aa5ac7a6e31b1e4add3f0660f893bdf727607133ff0a2e6406653cbd89baa781; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:18:06.703Z.