LAX96LA327 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT) to L05
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA327
- 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
- N5480F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT), El Monte, CATo L05
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Fluid, hydraulic › Leak
- Hydraulic system, line › Cross/stripped threaded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After landing, the pilot applied the brakes only to discover that he had no braking action. Nearing the departure end of the runway, he realized he no longer had enough runway to take off and attempted to turn off instead. After leaving the runway, the aircraft struck a pile of rocks. Witnesses stated that the approach and landing seemed normal until it became obvious that the aircraft was neither stopping nor going around. An inspection revealed that a brake line fitting had been stripped and that there was no brake fluid in the system. In the opinion of the aircraft manufacturer, the aircraft was in a position to go around at the time the brake failure was discovered. The runway was clean and dry with no visible skid marks.
Probable cause
brake failure due to a stripped brake fitting that allowed the brake fluid to leak out of the system. The failure of maintenance personnel to detect and repair the faulty brake line during the last 100-hour inspection, and the pilot's failure to perform a go-around were factors in this accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA327
- Event ID
- 20001208X06768
- Case number
- LAX96LA327
- 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: 09cdecc6e6d69b0093b95e6a5b355d504dce99de43fcbd0e6056207d4088d28d; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:17:27.031Z.