LAX98LA054 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Tulare, CA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA054
- 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 J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N91915
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulare, 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 object
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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 › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot desired to become an agricultural pilot and was practicing low passes over a field. The pilot failed to see three power transmission cables and the airplane struck a 300-foot-span of number 8 gauge copper conductor suspended about 45 to 50 feet above the ground with its propeller. An in-flight fire erupted in the cockpit area. The fire was located at a break in a fuel line from the fuel selector valve to the engine. The pilot suffered second and third degree burns to his face, arms, and left leg and landed the airplane hard, collapsing one of the main landing gear. He egressed the airplane unaided while the fire spread destroying the airplane. There was no evidence of mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane before the collision with power transmission cables.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate obstacle clearance and his inadequate visual outlook.. Factors were a severed fuel line which resulted in an in-flight fire, which diminished the pilot's ability to land the airplane with smoke and fire in the cockpit.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA054
- Event ID
- 20001208X09332
- Case number
- LAX98LA054
- 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: 46b20a69de2af97bd1a62cf726e82e8dcfa0e2f1bf48085ae00651176b2968e1; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:41:09.033Z.