WPR19FAMS1 · Cessna 172 S
Gryphon Aire Cessna 172 S · Accident while maneuvering
From Pescadero, CA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19FAMS1
- 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
- Unknown
Cessna 172 S
- 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
- N3504A
- Operator
- Gryphon Aire
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pescadero, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2005)
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Radar data indicated that the pilot departed around dusk and proceeded over the ocean, paralleling the coastline for about 20 miles before radar contact was lost about 3 miles offshore. Several persons in a campground that overlooked the ocean, witnessed an aircraft impact the water a few miles offshore; although they immediately notified law enforcement, who in turn notified the US Coast Guard (USCG), based on the lack of any reported missing or distressed aircraft in the region, the USCG did not initiate a physical search of the reported impact site at that time.
The airplane was leased by a flying club and was discovered missing the following day when it could not be located by a club member who had scheduled to fly it. A USCG search several days later in the area of the last radar contact revealed no evidence of the missing airplane or pilot.
According to the flying club president, the pilot was not authorized to fly any of the club airplanes solo at the time of his disappearance, although he had been previously. To date, no subsequent traces of either the missing pilot or the airplane have been located; the airplane is presumed destroyed by impact in the ocean, and the pilot is presumed to have been fatally injured.
Probable cause
Impact with the ocean for reasons that could not be determined because the airplane was not located.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19FAMS1
- Event ID
- 20190703X62644
- Case number
- WPR19FAMS1
- 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 2019-06-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fb01d48544883e324cd7b023a266d55a649c18494f604d0f13ffb8459a43953b; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:01:13.659Z.