LAX97FA065 · Opperman LANCAIR IV-P LANCAIR IV
Opperman LANCAIR IV-P LANCAIR IV · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Buchanan Field (CCR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97FA065
- 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
Opperman LANCAIR IV-P LANCAIR IV
- Aircraft type
- Opperman LANCAIR IV-P
- 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
- N444LP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buchanan Field (CCR), Concord, CATo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At the time of the accident the aircraft had accumulated about 32 total hours. The delivery pilot and the owner pilot departed for a local familiarization flight. The aircraft failed to return and the wreckage was located the next day about 12 miles northeast of the departure airport. The aircraft collided with rolling farmland in a wings level attitude with the gear and flaps retracted. There was adequate fuel onboard for the local flight. There was engine power being generated at the time of the ground collision. Disassembly of the engine and a functional testing of system components found no failures or discrepancies. The featherable propeller was in the normal governing pitch range under engine power at the time of ground collision.
Probable cause
In-flight loss of control for an undetermined reason.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97FA065
- Event ID
- 20001208X07182
- Case number
- LAX97FA065
- 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: 7735ec6b868cf9de6798817c6814a84b1a8a54cf0fcd08b95002bde0e1abc8d7; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:05:56.723Z.