LAX97FA047 · Piper PA-28-236
Piper PA-28-236 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Hayward Executive Airport (HWD) to Bermuda Dunes Airport (UDD)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97FA047
- 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
Piper PA-28-236
- 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
- N8447B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hayward Executive Airport (HWD), Hayward, CATo Bermuda Dunes Airport (UDD), Bermuda Dunes, 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
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was found with the wings and empennage separated from the fuselage. The separations were approximately symmetrical on the left and right sides of the aircraft, and overload in character. Recorded weather data indicated clouds and light rain near the accident site at the time of the crash. The pilot was not instrument rated and his logbook did not reveal any recent instrument training or experience. The was no record of the pilot obtaining a preflight or in-flight weather briefing.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which led to spatial disorientation and loss of aircraft control, and the pilot exceeding the aircraft's design stress limits during an attempted recovery. The noninstrument-rated pilot's failure to obtain a weather briefing, the weather conditions, and the dark night were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97FA047
- Event ID
- 20001208X07057
- Case number
- LAX97FA047
- 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 1996-11-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 514eac97e6cdcdd6e76d0f6614b27c0b90ad7157d3067e93fa27abae6a3f4071; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:06:32.397Z.