LAX94FA005 · Piper PA-32-300
Long Beach Flying Club Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From an unrecorded airport to Brackett Field (POC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94FA005
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N4018W
- Operator
- Long Beach Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Brackett Field (POC), La Verne, 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 · climb to 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Proper altitude, not attained
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, inadvertent use
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The recently certificated commercial pilot was attending a junior college flying team orientation session and practice safety and flight evaluation conference with two student passengers. At the completion of the event, all aircraft departed in VFR flight conditions for the same destination. Several different routes were flown by the different aircraft through the mountainous terrain. There were three canyon type routes on a more direct course toward the destination. All three had a road in the center of the canyon. On the sectional chart, the preferred canyon route with the lowest terrain was the only one shown with a road depicted. After takeoff, the accident flight followed a road and entered a canyon immediately to the north of the preferred route. The canyon gradually narrowed and eventually ended with an abrupt rise in terrain into a box canyon. The wreckage was found about 2,000 feet below the top of the surrounding terrain.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertent flight into a box canyon and his failure to attain a safe altitude. A factor in the accident was the pilot's lack of familiarity with the geographic area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94FA005
- Event ID
- 20001211X13578
- Case number
- LAX94FA005
- 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: 263171a0d022b6a3ccc51d35bb28028579e11a6244c20c5418d3207d90f4bf57; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:21:55.882Z.