LAX97LA324 · Piper PA28R-180
Piper PA28R-180 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD) to Reno Tahoe International Airport (RNO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA324
- 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 PA28R-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N69645
- Operator
- Kevin e Howell · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD), Ogden, UTTo Reno Tahoe International Airport (RNO)
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel starvation; Stall/mush
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vso), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that the landing gear down lights did not come on and he executed a go-around so the air traffic control tower personnel could visually check the gear's position. The tower personnel confirmed that the gear appeared down. On crosswind, the aircraft descended and struck a fence. The pilot said the engine began sputtering when he initiated the climb. Witnesses, including another pilot in the traffic pattern, reported seeing the aircraft in a nose high attitude with the wings oscillating before the aircraft entered a stall and descended behind buildings. The pilot was in the left seat for the flight. A Statement of Demonstrated Ability was issued on March 17, 1987, for a right arm amputation from the shoulder down on the basis of a special medical flight test in a non-complex Piper PA28-180. The FAA inspector who conducted the flight test issued a student pilot certificate with several limitations, which were not transferred to his subsequent temporary and permanent pilot certificates as required by pertinent FAA Orders. The certificated flight instructor (CFI) who flew with the pilot just before this flight noted that he had many difficulties in controlling the aircraft and working the trim, adjusting the power settings, operating the gear controls, talking on the radio, and moving the flap control handle. In any of those operations, the pilot had to hold the yoke with his knees and reach across his body. The CFI said the pilot needed more work and did not endorse him for high performance aircraft. Post-accident examination of the aircraft revealed no evidence of failure or malfunction with the flight controls or engine. Fuel system continuity was established. A measured 2.5 gallons were drained from the left wing tank and 1.5 gallons from the right wing tank (unusable fuel in each tank is 1-gallon). A screw that attaches to the bus was found to be missing from the landing gear indicator circuit breaker. The system had been worked on by a maintenance facility just before the flight. Prior to the 4.5-hour accident flight, the pilot had logged 3 hours in high performance aircraft with a CFI. Most of the aircraft controls, normal and emergency, are on the pilot's right side. The pilot wore no prosthetic device during the accident flight. None of the passengers were rated pilots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain an adequate airspeed during a go-around, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/mush. Factors in the accident were: the pilot's lack of qualification in the aircraft; the FAA pilot certification system's failure to transfer the medical limitations imposed on the pilot to his private pilot certificate; the pilot's inadequate preflight and in-flight fuel planning/decisions that caused the aircraft to arrive with a critically low fuel state, which resulted in a momentary loss of power due to an unporting of the fuel tank supply pickup at a critical time in the go-around; and, the maintenance facilities' failure to properly connect the landing gear indicator circuit breaker to the bus pane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA324
- Event ID
- 20001208X08888
- Case number
- LAX97LA324
- 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: 808671d413f590e59ae865f5ff3ce0d24253c18effe98ddfd47cd1bbc56d1e43; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:49:09.239Z.