LAX94LA002 · Cessna 170
Cessna 170 · Accident: undershoot on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94LA002
- 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
Cessna 170
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 170
- 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
- N4266V
- Operator
- Joel R. Henderson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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 › Altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had just purchased the airplane, and the accident occurred during his familiarization flight. The pilot took off and, along with the previous owner, flew to a local practice area. The previous owner demonstrated airwork and then demonstrated a takeoff and a landing. According to the pilot, he then attempted to land the airplane. During his first approach, he 'waved off.' The pilot further reported that during his second approach he was low. The pilot added full engine power, and the airplane's main landing gear collided with the airport's perimeter fence short of the runway. The pilot had not flown any airplane during the previous 90 days. Also, he had no previous piloting experience in the accident make and model airplane.
Probable cause
was the pilot's failure to maintain an adequate approach path to the runway and his inadequate altitude. Contributing factors were the pilot's delayed remedial action and his lack of recent experience in the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94LA002
- Event ID
- 20001211X13585
- Case number
- LAX94LA002
- 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 1993-10-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d56ca883b56ad39687055244533103fa7d5f6677b7148d3a40d843a8bad13010; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:47:35.750Z.