LAX00LA023 · Luhnau BD-5B
Luhnau BD-5B · Accident: propeller failure/malfunction on approach
From 61B · NV to 61B
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA023
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Luhnau BD-5B
- Aircraft type
- Luhnau BD-5
- 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
- N62765
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 61B · NVTo 61B
- 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 downwind
- 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
- Propeller failure/malfunction
- 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 › Maintenance, adjustment, improper
- Propeller system/accessories, electric pitch ctl › Not connected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the amateur-built airplane took off and entered the traffic pattern. A witness heard the pilot announce his position in the pattern. About 10 seconds later, while the airplane was maintaining a level flight cruise attitude, the airplane began descending, and it turned toward the runway. The witness further reported that the airplane's descent rate increased and the pilot broadcast, "I've got a problem." The airplane appeared to descend at a 30- to 40-degree nose down angle. It impacted a berm about 1 mile short of the landing threshold. This was the first flight following the pilot's installation of the new propeller assembly. Prior to taking off, a witness observed the pilot make a wiring change to the propeller's pitch control electric drive motor. The change was intended to reduce the time necessary to vary the pitch through its full range of travel from 15 to between 7 and 8 seconds. The on-scene examination of the assembly revealed that the wire was disconnected, and the blade pitch was found about the 2-degree (flat blade) position, which would produce considerable drag in flight. No internal malfunctions to the propeller assembly were noted. The pilot, a retired airline captain, was not the builder of the airplane. He did not possess either a repairman or a FAA Airframe & Powerplant certificate.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to secure an electrical wire terminal in the propeller pitch control circuit following a maintenance adjustment, which resulted in the propeller malfunctioning and going to a flat pitch. The flat pitch of the propeller produced a high drag which precluded the aircraft from maintaining flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA023
- Event ID
- 20001212X19996
- Case number
- LAX00LA023
- 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: e571112eff37434874314a4eb5bf2386a16ea529442b7f1cc10453be84947ac6; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:41:16.178Z.