WPR20LA169 · Cessna 175
Cessna 175 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Big Bear City Airport (L35) to Redlands Municipal Airport (REI)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA169
- 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
- 3 · 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
Cessna 175
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N9217B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Big Bear City Airport (L35), Big Bear City, CATo Redlands Municipal Airport (REI), Redlands, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1958)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noncertificated pilot was conducting a cross-country flight during daytime visual flight rules flight conditions. Recorded automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) data showed that as the airplane was on a southerly heading, nearing the destination airport, it made a left 270° turn at an altitude of 5,125 ft msl. About 46 second later, the airplane completed the turn, and was established on a west-northwesterly heading, at an altitude of 5,275 ft msl. About 1 minute later, the airplane made a left turn to a southwesterly heading, at an altitude of 3,975 ft msl and continued to descend until ADS-B contact was lost 34 seconds later at an altitude of 2,775 ft, and about 436 ft northeast of the accident site. The accident site was in hilly terrain, about 3.47 miles southeast of the intended destination. There were no known witnesses to the accident sequence.
A postaccident examination of the recovered wreckage revealed no evidence of any preexisting mechanical malfunction that would have precluded normal operation.
Weather data for the area around the accident site depicted favorable conditions for overcast clouds and restricted visibility with haze and clouds from the surface with tops near 4,300 ft. In addition, marginal visual meteorological conditions to instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) prevailed during the period, with instrument flight rules (IFR) to low IFR conditions being reported at the two closest airports southwest of the accident site. Due to IMC, the pilot likely did not have visible reference to the horizon during the descent to the destination airport, which resulted in a collision with terrain.
Whether effects from the pilot’s use of lamotrigine or some underlying medical condition contributed to the accident cannot be determined based on the limited available evidence. Some or all of the detected ethanol may have been from sources other than ingestion. It is unlikely that ethanol contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The noncertificated pilot’s visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions and subsequent impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA169
- Event ID
- 20200605X03716
- Case number
- WPR20LA169
- 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, cause areas. 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: 50ed3584b7a9aebd9e22fb79610aed8765a02b99399dc8f386cd738af38a200e; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:15:41.145Z.