LAX98LA010 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Kahului International Airport (OGG) to Lanai Airport (LNY)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA010
- 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 PA-28-140
- 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
- N836FC
- Operator
- David Chevalier
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kahului International Airport (OGG), Kahului, HITo Lanai Airport (LNY)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Passenger › Control interference, intentional
- Passenger › Elevator, improper use of
- Passenger › Relinquishing of control, not performed
- Pilot in command › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While practicing touch-and-go landings the pilot gave permission to his passenger to place his hands on the yoke. The purpose was to allow the passenger to feel what the pilot was doing during the flight. The passenger had been briefed that the pilot was going to raise the nose of the aircraft during the landing sequence. At this point, the passenger pushed the yoke forward and a struggle for the aircraft controls took place between the pilot and the passenger. The pilot was able to reestablish control of the aircraft before impacting the runway, but it resulted in a hard landing. When questioned by the pilot regarding his [the passenger's] actions during the landing, the passenger stated that he thought that the pilot needed his assistance in landing. The passenger reacted automatically when he perceived that the pilot was having trouble raising the nose of the aircraft. Witnesses to the accident reported that as the aircraft got close to the runway it dropped about 50 to 60 feet straight down to the ground. Both witnesses reported that weather was not a factor.
Probable cause
Interference on the controls by the passenger as the aircraft neared touchdown, and the pilot's failure to adequately brief and supervise the passenger on the use and relinquishing of the flight controls. A factor in the accident was the intentional control interference of the passenger.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA010
- Event ID
- 20001208X09055
- Case number
- LAX98LA010
- 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 1997-10-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 06555ab618ef601fefc5bb12ba14a24fd76e4a0280cdcb34f362c86579f3b5ce; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:22:25.795Z.