LAX93LA329 · Piper PA-34-220
Flight Contract Service Piper PA-34-220 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) to Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX93LA329
- 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-34-220
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N1232H
- Operator
- Flight Contract Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HITo Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK), Oakland, 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 engine power
- 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
- Lubricating system › Undetermined
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT WAS CONDUCTING A FERRY FLIGHT ACROSS THE PACIFIC OCEAN FROM HONOLULU, HI, TO OAKLAND, CA. THE RIGHT ENGINE SUSTAINED A LOSS OF OIL PRESSURE AND THE PILOT SECURED THE ENGINE. ABOUT TWO AND A HALF HOURS, LATER, THE LEFT ENGINE BEGAN TO LOSE OIL AND, SUBSEQUENTLY, THE OIL PRESSURE AND POWER BEGAN TO DECREASE. THE PILOT WAS UNABLE TO MAINTAIN THE CRUISING ALTITUDE AND ELECTED TO DITCH THE AIRPLANE INTO THE PACIFIC OCEAN NEXT TO A RESCUE VESSEL.
Probable cause
THE LOSS OF OIL PRESSURE TO BOTH ENGINES FOR UNDETERMINED REASONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX93LA329
- Event ID
- 20001211X13180
- Case number
- LAX93LA329
- 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 1993-08-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f8187981440e82498e2b83b244da655d9e33b3aca733153bbb46213675529c78; retrieved 2026-09-23T01:43:53.176Z.