LAX98LA307 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: hard landing
From Brackett Field (POC) to Castle Airport (MER)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA307
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N9085J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brackett Field (POC), LAVERNE, CATo Castle Airport (MER)
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Aircraft control, not obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Flare, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was to attend an airshow at the accident airport. The pilot filed an IFR flight plan and conducted a preflight inspection, including an engine run-up with no discrepancies noted. The accident airport had issued a NOTAM concerning takeoff and landing procedures on the 11,802-foot-long runway. Aircraft would be taking off and landing approximately 3,000 feet apart in three different locations identified with different colored dots. The NOTAM further stated that there would be an increase in traffic volume and the tower was a temporary tower. The pilot had been cleared to land on the orange dot. The pilot complied with this request and was once again instructed to extend his final approach to the green dot. Prior to touchdown the pilot had to correct for a left crosswind. He reported that the wind decreased in velocity and the airplane sink rate increased. He advanced the throttle, and was caught by a gust of wind on the left side. He added additional power and corrected for the crosswind condition with opposite aileron and rudder inputs, but the controls were ineffective. The aircraft collided with the runway and collapsed the landing gear. Witnesses to the accident stated that a crosswind condition existed at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare and his failure to adequately compensate for the existing crosswind conditions and maintain airplane control during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA307
- Event ID
- 20001211X11113
- Case number
- LAX98LA307
- 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: 5760d2a3fe8075dbc26b29c7254bcd41f960ea712ff1e834698437f85232aafc; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:39:43.259Z.