LAX98LA276 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Gillespie Field (SEE) to L15
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA276
- 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
- N291HA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gillespie Field (SEE), San Diego, CATo L15
- 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 on ground/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At the completion of a 2-hour cross-country flight, the pilot was cleared to land on runway 18 with the winds reported as 190 degrees at 8 knots. On final approach the pilot noticed the airplane was being pushed to the left and tried correcting with right control yoke and left rudder. He stated he had the second notch of flaps engaged and power on. During the flare the stall light came on. He indicated this startled and distracted him and that he kept the throttle in until he was off the runway. He pulled power as the aircraft entered a rocky area near the runway. The pilot reported that the lighting conditions at this time of day, shortly after sundown, affected his visual acuity. Sunset was at 1933; civil twilight began at 2001. A computer sun-moon program determined the sun was at -4.2 degrees on a magnetic bearing of 277.7 degrees.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the existing wind conditions and his failure to maintain directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA276
- Event ID
- 20001211X10907
- Case number
- LAX98LA276
- 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 1998-08-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ba2b2d4d97dd30993bca2692eda6b843e7faa870f1655cb4d52d1e4a00128bbd; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:04:27.849Z.