LAX96LA152 · Powell GLASAIR
Powell GLASAIR · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Q68 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA152
- 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
- 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
Powell GLASAIR
- Aircraft type
- Powell GLASAIR
- 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
- N59LP
- Operator
- Bobby A. Hockett · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q68To not recorded
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/spin
- 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
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, attempted
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
- Throttle/power lever, cable › Loose
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot (part owner of the aircraft) held an A&P certificate & had completed a condition/annual inspection of the aircraft before the flight. The aircraft co-owner stated there was a problem with the throttle cable, & the pilot was going to order a new one, but had not yet done so. Witnesses said the aircraft departed straight out after takeoff. About 4 minutes later, it entered a downwind to the pattern, low & very close to the runway. The witnesses estimated the aircraft's altitude was between 200 and 300 feet agl. At first, some witnesses thought the pilot was going to make a downwind landing on the runway. The witnesses said the aircraft made a tight turn from downwind to base. During the base-to-final turn, the right wing dropped, and the aircraft entered a nose-down descent and crashed. The witnesses heard the engine running before impact, but they described the sound as 'not full power.' An examination of the engine & controls revealed that a clip, which secured the accelerator pump plunger to its actuation shaft in the carburetor, was missing & the pump was inoperative. The throttle cable housing/actuating shaft at the carburetor end was found separated from the cable sheath, exposing the unsupported inside cable. A piece of welding rod was found bent around the housing end & taped to the sheath. The cable was removed from the aircraft & operationally tested. During push-pull tests, the carburetor end would sometimes move an amount corresponding to the cockpit end input; at other times, the carburetor end would move only slightly.
Probable cause
the pilot's decision to fly the aircraft with a known mechanical discrepancy in the throttle linkage, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power; and his failure to maintain an adequate airspeed while maneuvering for an emergency landing, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin. Inadequate maintenance/annual inspection was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA152
- Event ID
- 20001208X05600
- Case number
- LAX96LA152
- 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: afceab503f37a2ed65dc975f746b4afa3ac025cad665b4023051d5f0110ed088; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:23:40.704Z.