LAX00FA302 · Piper PA-24
Piper PA-24 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Oroville Municipal Airport (OVE) to Independence Airport (2O7)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00FA302
- 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
Piper PA-24
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N300P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oroville Municipal Airport (OVE), Oroville, CATo Independence Airport (2O7), Independence, 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
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with terrain on the downwind leg as it approached a point abeam the runway threshold. Auxiliary lighting had recently been installed in the glareshield. This did not provide adequate lighting, so the pilot clipped two flashlights onto the glareshield, used two additional handheld flashlights to illuminate the instrument panel, and continued the flight. The airplane maintained a gradual descent as it flew south of the airport, then completed a left turn to the north on the downwind leg. It continued to descend until it collided with the terrain. The pilot, at some time in the past, had significant surgery on at least one of his eyes, including a corneal transplant. Such surgery can result in complications that substantially impair vision. The lighting level in the cockpit, with the additional lighting from the flashlights, would have essentially prohibited any dark-adaptation of the pilot's vision, and interfered with him seeing anything clearly outside the airplane. Analysis of specimens for the pilot was positive for the following drugs: Benzoylecgonine and ecgonine methyl ester (inactive metabolites of cocaine), cocaine, Temazepam, Oxazepam, and acetaminophen. The pilot was likely impaired by the effects of cocaine withdrawal, and possibly by the use of a prescription sleeping aid. The use of a medication for control of pain/fever symptoms implies that such symptoms were significant. Distraction, sensory disturbance, or impaired judgment as a result of illness could have conceivably played some role in this accident. It is also possible, but less likely, that the pilot had an acute event that resulted in incapacitation (fainting or seizure, for example) as a result of his drug use. The pilot and passenger were both thrown forward and to the right by the impact. The lack of shoulder restraint concentrated deceleration forces on the lap belt resulting in separation of the floor to which the seat belt attached. The damage, deformation, and fractures were typical of a single overload event, and indicate substantial forward rotation of the attachment point during the separation process. This and centrifugal force allowed the pilot to strike the instrument console to his right.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain terrain clearance. Factors included night conditions, cockpit lighting, which compromised the pilot's night vision, and drug impairment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00FA302
- Event ID
- 20001212X21752
- Case number
- LAX00FA302
- 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 2000-08-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a2ad9c0d58662f38b2f265acf4efa4b50750db1b6621233d6d0ac3e45e3ff8ce; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:55:32.571Z.