The pilot of a Cessna Citation II that crashed near French Valley Airport (F70) at 4:14 a.m. PST in Murrieta, California, descended below the decision altitude without the required visual cues, causing the July 8, 2023, controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accident that killed all six aboard, the NTSB has concluded. French Valley Airport did not have a control tower, and while a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was on board, “the CVR did not contain data from the accident flight and none of the recovered audio was pertinent to the investigation.”
Toxicology testing revealed that the pilot had “very low levels” of blood ethanol from an unknown source, according to the report, which the NTSB concluded was unlikely to have significantly impaired performance. A pilot-rated right-seat occupant also had ethanol concentrations that “were high” in all tested samples (between 0.109% and 0.365% according to the toxicology results), but the report notes that decomposition made it impossible to determine the source or whether it was material to the event.
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