LAX90FA084 · Piper PA-46-350P
Piper PA-46-350P · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Porterville Municipal Airport (PTV) to L12 · Redlands, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX90FA084
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Unknown
Piper PA-46-350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N8888M
- Operator
- James W. Hager · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Porterville Municipal Airport (PTV), Porterville, CATo L12 · Redlands, 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 · 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Flight/nav instruments, airspeed indicator › False indication
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Anti-ice/deice system, not used
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pitot/static system › Ice
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
BFR TKOF, PLT WAS ADZ OF IFR CONDS ALONG 1ST PART OF ROUTE, WITH FLT PRCTNS FOR OCNL MOD TURBC BLO 15,000' & MIXED ICG FM FRZG LVL (6000') TO 18,000'. HE FILED IFR FLT PLAN WITH CRUISE ALT OF 11,000'. DRG DEP, PLT WAS CLRD TO CLIMB TO 9000' & TOLD TO EXPECT CLNC TO 11,000', 5 MIN LTR . RADAR DATA SHOWED, ACFT CLIMBED AT ABT 1500'/MIN & 100 KTS, SLOWING SLIGHTLY ABV 8000'. AT ABT 9000', ACFT STARTED TO LVL & ACCELERATE. IT THEN CLIMBED MOMENTARILY, DEVIATED LATERALLY FM COURSE & ENTERED STEEP DSCNT. IN-FLT BREAKUP OCCURRED & WRECKAGE WAS SCATTERED OVR 4100' AREA. TRAJECTORY STUDY SHOWED BREAKUP OCCURRED BTN 4500' & 6500' AS ACFT WAS IN STEEP DSCNT IN EXCESS OF 266 KTS. METALLURGICAL EXAM OF WINGS & STA- BILIZERS REVEALED FEATURES TYPICAL OF OVERSTRESS SEPN; NO PREEXISTING CRACKS OR DEFECTS WERE FND. THE ACFT WAS RECENTLY PURCHASED. PLT'S SON INDCD PRINCIPAL PRBLM WAS 'TWENTY YEAR LEAP IN TECHNOLOGY' FM PREVIOUSLY OWNED PA-24, THAT PLT HAD DIFFICULTY WITH AVIONICS & FLT DRCTR/AUTOPLT, & THAT HE LACKED DETAIL TRNG IN AUTOPLT EMERGENCIES. (SEE:NTSB/SIR-92/03)
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO ACTIVATE THE PITOT HEAT BEFORE FLYING AT AND ABOVE THE FREEZING LEVEL IN INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC), FOLLOWED BY HIS IMPROPER RESPONSE TO ERRONEOUS AIRSPEED INDICATIONS THAT RESULTED FROM BLOCKAGE OF THE PITOT TUBE BY ATMOSPHERIC ICING. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WAS SPATIAL DISORIENTATION OF THE PILOT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX90FA084
- Event ID
- 20001212X22579
- Case number
- LAX90FA084
- 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: d57294f447a142949cff79b889734acb4d0e31511d19833f035f4208972d4b70; retrieved 2026-09-21T02:58:26.916Z.