WPR17FA025 · Piper PA 28-181
Piper PA 28-181 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Upland-Cable Airport (CCB) to Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17FA025
- 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
Piper PA 28-181
- 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
- N6912C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Upland-Cable Airport (CCB), Upland, CATo Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL), Riverside, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1985)
- 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 · climb to 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot departed from a non-towered airport in dark night conditions destined for an airport located about 15 nautical miles southeast; a direct route of flight between the two airports would require flight through controlled (Class C) airspace. Radar data showed that, after departure, the pilot conducted a left climbing turn, then proceeded north (as prescribed for noise abatement procedures at the airport), and remained clear of the controlled airspace, toward an area of dark, unpopulated, rising terrain. About 3 minutes after departure, the pilot contacted the local controller. While talking to the controller, the pilot's transmission suddenly stopped, and the airplane was lost from radar at an altitude about 3,000 ft mean sea level in the vicinity of the accident site.
The accident site was located on steep, rising terrain at an elevation about 2,920 ft. Ground scars indicated that the airplane was in a nearly wings-level attitude at the time of impact. There were no preimpact anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that, while communicating with the controller, the pilot did not monitor and maintain situational awareness as the airplane approached mountainous, unlit terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from rising terrain in dark night conditions, which resulted in controlled flight into terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17FA025
- Event ID
- 20161122X12427
- Case number
- WPR17FA025
- 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, 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: 5aaeab5a7a16e8d35e53efac64868bf266215e0c1512e4c9096ae203102c69a7; retrieved 2026-09-14T22:02:35.712Z.