LAX98LA137 · Grumman American AA5B
Grumman American AA5B · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From General William J Fox Airfield (WJF) to No airport
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA137
- 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
Grumman American AA5B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA5
- 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
- N28565
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From General William J Fox Airfield (WJF), Lancaster, CATo No airport
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Airport/facilities › Inadequate
- Pilot in command › Information, unavailable
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The maintenance technician/pilot was returning the airplane to its owner located on a private airstrip after an annual inspection. He stated that he entered the traffic pattern by overflying the airport at 2000 (dusk), and entering on the 45 for the downwind to runway 28. As he lined up with the runway he said that he looked down at the airspeed indicator and heard a 'kunk,' at which point he noticed that the propeller had stopped. The pilot then noticed some power lines in his path, and at the same time he noticed the runway lights flicker and go out. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed a 3- to 4-inch gash in the spinner and some marks on one propeller blade, which the pilot said 'looked like it had scraped on something.' The pilot reported 'apparently there are two rows of power lines and somehow I hit a wire on the first row.' A maintenance worker reported that none of the power lines were broken, but one had been pulled out of its support. There were no charts or publications available to the pilot to warn him of the power lines. There were no visible displaced threshold markings on the dirt strip to indicate an obstructed 20:1 or 3-degree approach to runway 28. The runway had nonstandard lighting with six red/green lights at both thresholds. Official sunset had occurred about 1924.
Probable cause
the lack of available published information regarding obstructions and nonstandard lighting at the private airport, and the lack of a lighted and properly marked displaced threshold.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA137
- Event ID
- 20001211X09890
- Case number
- LAX98LA137
- 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 1998-04-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c7b56565530228162999f9f54fc2ddec777808a300b77bdbe56079c722646d52; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:52:43.314Z.