LAX99LA011 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: overrun during landing
From O48 · LITTLE RIVER, CA to 0Q5
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA011
- 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
- 3 · 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-28-181
- 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
- N6870F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From O48 · LITTLE RIVER, CATo 0Q5
- 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 · aborted
- 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
- Overrun
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, excessive
- Pilot in command › Go-around, delayed
- Pilot in command › Proper touchdown point, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Two airplanes were being flown to the airport. The first airplane landed and the occupants watched the second airplane approach. The pilot of the first airplane commented that the second airplane was coming down too steep and fast to land. Witnesses stated the second airplane landed past the halfway point of the 3,400 foot runway at a high speed. A passenger from the first airplane noticed smoke from the tires after touchdown and thought it was the brakes being applied. Witnesses heard full power applied. The airplane struck a chain link fence on the airport perimeter during liftoff, shearing the nose landing gear off. The airplane then proceeded down a slope, struck a building and equipment, and came to rest on rocks on the opposite shore of a water inlet. After heavy wave action, the airplane subsequently sank in the turbulent water and was not recovered.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive airspeed, failure to attain the proper touchdown point, and the delayed decision to initiate a go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA011
- Event ID
- 20001211X11290
- Case number
- LAX99LA011
- 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: 00ad038fddca7efd9fe5e9a9af9f2b3994f091eca41ecdcc8bc36d4234866884; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:21:00.645Z.