LAX98LA181 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Falcon Field (FFZ) to E14 · Tucson, AZ
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA181
- 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
- N7447H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Falcon Field (FFZ), FALCON FIELD, AZTo E14 · Tucson, AZ
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical 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
- Throttle/power lever, linkage › Disconnected
- Throttle/power lever, linkage › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane, which the pilot owned and operated, experienced a total loss of engine power while descending for a practice forced landing. The pilot indicated that no adequate landing site was available within gliding distance, so he landed in the rough terrain of a dry wash shearing off both main landing gear. The airplane was recovered and examined. A clamp that had been welded onto a bracket which was secured to the engine case was found broken. The clamp/bracket assembly supported the throttle cable. When the weld broke subsequent movement of the cockpit throttle control had no effect upon the engine's rpm. The pilot described the weld as having been 'bad,' and it was not a Piper manufactured component.
Probable cause
Failure of a weld in the engine's throttle control support assembly due to inadequate maintenance which was the ultimate responsibility of the owner-pilot. Contributing factors were the presence of rough terrain, the lack of a suitable forced landing site, and the pilot's inadequate in-flight planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA181
- Event ID
- 20001211X10144
- Case number
- LAX98LA181
- 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: c7f6d2c43c47f6ecacd7b5501648ec6ad2043820a7e04e59aa96d058b8da77b6; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:48:37.530Z.