LAX95LA254 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident during initial climb
From L35 to L66 · Corona, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX95LA254
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N8742N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L35To L66 · Corona, CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
ABOUT 300 FEET INTO THE INITIAL CLIMB, THE PILOT NOTED THE ENGINE RPM HAD DECREASED AND THE RATE OF CLIMB WAS ZERO. HE INITIATED A LEFT TURN BACK TOWARD THE RUNWAY, BUT NOTED HE WAS LOSING BOTH AIRSPEED AND ALTITUDE. HE LOWERED ONE NOTCH OF FLAPS TO MAINTAIN ALTITUDE, BUT THE AIRPLANE CONTINUED TO DESCEND. WITH AIRSPEED STILL DECREASING, THE AIRPLANE COLLIDED WITH TERRAIN SHORT OF THE RUNWAY. THE ESTIMATED DENSITY WAS 8,700 FEET. ACCORDING TO THE MANUFACTURER, MAXIMUM POWER AVAILABLE AT THAT DENSITY ALTITUDE WOULD HAVE BEEN BETWEEN 65 AND 70 PERCENT, OR NO MORE THAN 2,315 RPM AT CRUISE. NO DISCREPANCIES WERE NOTED DURING AN EXAMINATION OF THE AIRPLANE AND A POST-ACCIDENT RUNUP OF THE ENGINE.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S IMPROPER PLANNING/DECISION AND FAILURE TO OBTAIN OR MAINTAIN ADEQUATE AIRSPEED DURING TAKEOFF. A FACTOR RELATING TO THE ACCIDENT WAS: THE HIGH DENSITY ALTITUDE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX95LA254
- Event ID
- 20001207X04002
- Case number
- LAX95LA254
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 6096cae1602f9b03130cae5105bb67ea853e34101266bc1fb91b1f339017535b; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:36:58.788Z.