LAX98LA243 · Beech 35
Beech 35 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From 95L · PAUMA VALLEY, CA to F70
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA243
- 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
Beech 35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N2720V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 95L · PAUMA VALLEY, CATo F70
- 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 (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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, annual inspection, inadequate
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, inadequate
- Throttle/power lever, linkage › Disconnected
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Temecula, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot initiated a go-around at 50 to 75 feet agl due to excessive airspeed, and as he applied full throttle, the engine went to idle. He turned the aircraft toward a street and impacted the terrain about 1/2 mile from the airport. The Safety Board conducted a teardown inspection of the engine and discovered that the throttle linkage was disconnected. The bolt that connects the throttle cable to the throttle control rod end bearing was protruding out of the extension sleeve by only two threads. The aircraft had only flown approximately 1 hour since the annual inspection earlier in the month. The pilot did not report any mechanical problems with the aircraft prior to the accident sequence.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to a disconnected throttle linkage, which was the result of an inadequate maintenance installation/inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA243
- Event ID
- 20001211X10641
- Case number
- LAX98LA243
- 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: 252c8ffaeccf284a3daa334b83083858833b9da27d8fa7377665a05c74d393ad; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:45:00.656Z.