LAX99FA053 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From LHU · LAKE HAVASU, AZ to Van Nuys Airport (VNY)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99FA053
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument 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
- N6272J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LHU · LAKE HAVASU, AZTo Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, CA
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Santa Clarita, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The private renter pilot had flown a night cross-country flight from southern California to Arizona. Upon returning at 0148 to his home base, a low stratus cloud cover existed. He had been receiving VFR flight following and subsequently requested an ILS approach for his destination airport. The pilot was unable to follow the controller's altitude and heading instructions. He was advised left of course and below his assigned altitude four times with a loss of radar contact twice. The VOR/LOC indicator had been out for repairs three times after complaints from renter pilots that the localizer needle was sticking or had poor needle deflection. The pilot's logbook noted VOR and localizer problems twice, 6 months prior to the accident. According to the pilot's logbook, he had flown about 31 hours in the past 6 months with .9 simulated and no actual instrument time. The pilot's last third-class flight physical of record occurred 27 months prior to the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the aircraft. Factors were the night weather conditions and the lack of total and recent instrument flight time.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99FA053
- Event ID
- 20001211X11575
- Case number
- LAX99FA053
- 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: eb9cba0d86f8a9b5279b803469794c1a3e95f00468c4346f097e8569e5e5bafe; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:17:31.346Z.