LAX92LA323 · Piper PA-28-161
Palomar Flight Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From 039 to Susanville Municipal Airport (SVE)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX92LA323
- 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-28-161
- 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
- N8078H
- Operator
- Palomar Flight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 039To Susanville Municipal Airport (SVE), Susanville, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT SAID THE AIRCRAFT HAD ACHIEVED AN ALTITUDE OF ABOUT 100 FEET AGL IN THE TAKEOFF INITIAL CLIMB WHEN THE ENGINE SUDDENLY QUIT. THE PILOT TOUCHED DOWN ON THE RUNWAY BUT WAS UNABLE TO STOP PRIOR TO OVER RUNNING THE END OF THE RUNWAY AND COLLIDING WITH A FENCE. THE AIRCRAFT AND ENGINE WERE EXAMINED BY FAA AIRWORTHINESS INSPECTORS WHO REPORTED FINDING NO ENGINE OR SYSTEM ABNORMALITY TO EXPLAIN THE LOSS OF POWER.
Probable cause
THE LOSS OF ENGINE POWER FOR UNDETERMINED REASONS. THE SHORT LENGTH OF THE RUNWAY WAS A FACTOR IN THE ACCIDENT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX92LA323
- Event ID
- 20001211X15215
- Case number
- LAX92LA323
- 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: b586784252f76b06714c779ed86a1883f680b6fcbfd3d5842a50ac259801bd10; retrieved 2026-09-23T02:53:08.458Z.