LAX96LA313 · Piper PA-46-310P
Piper PA-46-310P · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From L12 · CA to Long Beach International Airport (LGB)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA313
- 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-46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N9130N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L12 · CATo Long Beach International Airport (LGB), Long Beach, 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed runway 08 during local thunderstorm activity. The runway had an uphill gradient of 2.2 percent. The pilot reported the winds were from the southeast at 10 to 15 knots. He said that during takeoff, he raised the gear at approximately 50 feet agl and retracted the flaps. Except for light turbulence, the takeoff was uneventful until the airplane reached an altitude of about 75 to a 100 feet agl. At about that time, the airplane started descending. The pilot applied full power and increased the pitch attitude, but was unable to arrest the descent. When the pilot realized the airplane was going to contact the ground, he extended the landing gear. Before the landing gear was fully extended, the propeller struck the runway. The pilot noted a resultant vibration and elected to abort the takeoff. The airplane then traveled beyond the departure end of the runway and encountered rocky terrain.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper weather evaluation. The uphill runway condition and weather associated with thunderstorm(s) were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA313
- Event ID
- 20001208X06558
- Case number
- LAX96LA313
- 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: 87f5ae7ac77ff6b27c7cb50ad0b8063cd90283e33a1f380920f3ebfc21590c1d; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:23:18.669Z.