Martijn Bakker Piper PA-32R-300 accident
Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From BBK · CA to General William J Fox Airfield (WJF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA181
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-32R-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N3609Q
- Operator
- Martijn Bakker
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From BBK · CATo General William J Fox Airfield (WJF), Lancaster, 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · climb to 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
- 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
- Cooling system, cowling › Unlatched
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Burbank, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The upper engine cowling separated from the nose section during flight and lodged on the horizontal stabilizer. The cowling remained on the stabilizer until after landing and then fell off on the runway during the rollout. Postflight examination of portions of the upper cowl, which contained three fasteners, did not disclose any damage or excessive wear to the fasteners. However, the two front alignment pins that attach to the lower cowl were missing.
Probable cause
improperly secured upper cowl fasteners by unknown person(s).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA181
- Event ID
- 20001208X07950
- Case number
- LAX97LA181
- 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: d4e1d118fb991e0b9cff28c5e275c03943aa034a5303800f53d2e655e1682b46; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:34:28.776Z.