LAX97FA027 · Piper PA-44-180
Candance A. Larned Ent Piper PA-44-180 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR) to Long Beach International Airport (LGB)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97FA027
- 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
- 2 · 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-44-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-44
- 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
- N2157P
- Operator
- Candance A. Larned Ent
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR), Goodyear, AZTo 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
- En route · 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was flight following with ATC when controllers noticed that the aircraft began an unannounced turn and subsequent rapid descent. Radar data showed the aircraft entering a decreasing radius turn with an increasing rate of descent until radar coverage was lost. Clouds near the accident site ranged from broken to overcast with possible icing conditions at the cruising altitude. The wings, horizontal stabilizer, and vertical stabilizer separated during the descent. An examination of the fractures found no evidence of preexisting cracking or damage. Witnesses near the crash site reported the night was very dark. The pilot had been instrument rated for several years, but there was no evidence that he was maintaining currency. The coroner reported finding clinical evidence of diabetes mellitus, a disqualifying medical condition.
Probable cause
the pilot's spatial disorientation which led to a loss of aircraft control, and exceeding the aircraft's structural design limits after the aircraft had entered a descending spiral. The pilot's lack of instrument flight currency and the dark night were factors in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97FA027
- Event ID
- 20001208X06911
- Case number
- LAX97FA027
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-10-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 62e55d183948c4bbc1b326e9045403526f906ab7820d034ba6da7dc6bb04cabb; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:09:33.550Z.