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Atlas / NTSB / LAX79FA062

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event LAX79FA062

1979-07-20 MESA, Arizona, United States Fatal 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Historical record (pre-1982)

NTSB recorded this accident in the pre-1982 coded-field schema — structured fields rather than free-text narrative. Decoded codes use established NTSB single-letter taxonomies; cause factors remain verbatim pending the Form 6120.4 codebook lookup.

Aircraft

CESSNA 172 · N6250D

Damage

Substantial

Craft type

Airplane

Classification

Accident

Light condition

Night

Weather

VMC

Phase of flight

D1

Operator type

Personal/private

Kind of flying

B0

Weather at impact

Sky

CLEAR

Temp

100° F

Aircraft history

Serial number

000017272665

Total time

57 hrs

Pilot

Certificate

Commercial

Total hours

280

Age

22

Probable cause (from PRE1982.MDB)

LANDED TRAILING TWO LONG CABLES.

Investigator remarks

STRUCK CABLES ACROSS CANYON WHILE FLYING UP RVR.

Cause factors

  • 64/C/15 C
    PILOT IN COMMAND FAILED TO SEE AND AVOID OBJECTS OR OBSTRUCTIONS Cause
  • 84/B/G B
    MISCELLANEOUS FOREIGN MATERIAL AFFECTING NORMAL OPERATIONS
  • 64/L/33 L
    PILOT IN COMMAND EXERCISED POOR JUDGMENT
  • 88/L/14 L
    MISCELLANEOUS ACTS,CONDITIONS UNWARRANTED LOW FLYING
  • 83/K/I K
    TERRAIN HIGH OBSTRUCTIONS Joint factor

Decoded against the NTSB Form 6120.4 cause-factor codebook (ct_Pre1982 table). Each row shows the raw triplet, modifier (Cause / Factor / etc.), category, and specific code.

Source: NTSB pre-1982 historical archive. Docket 3 3897. Source file NTSB_1979_3_3897.txt. Modern CAROL record on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type. Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗