LAX87LA062 · Piper PA-28-235
Air Trails Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK) to Salinas Municipal Airport (SNS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX87LA062
- 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-28-235
- 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
- N1429H
- Operator
- Air Trails
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK), Oakland, CATo Salinas Municipal Airport (SNS), Salinas, 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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 › Fuel tank selector position, not corrected
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, poor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A PIPER PA-28-235 COLLIDED WITH A DIRT BANK AFTER A LOSS OF POWER WHILE ON A NIGHT VFR PLEASURE FLIGHT. THE PLT INDICATED THAT APRX 3 MIN AFTER TAKEOFF WHILE CRUISING AT 1,400 FT MSL THE ENGINE RPM ABRUPTLY DECREASED TO IDLE. THE FUEL SELECTOR CONTROL WAS FOUND IN THE LEFT TIP TANK POSITION AFTER THE ACCIDENT AND THE LEFT TIP TANK WAS EMPTY. THE OPERATORS MANUAL FOR THE ACFT STATES 'FOR ALL OPERATIONS THE TIP TANKS SHOULD BE USED LAST. WHEN USING LESS THAN THE STANDARD 84 GAL CAPACITY OF THE TANKS, IT IS RECOMMENDED THE TIP TANKS BE FILLED FIRST AND THEN REGULATE THE FUEL LOAD BY VARYING THE AMOUNT OF FUEL IN THE INBOARD TANKS.' THE PLT INDICATED THAT THERE WAS 30-35 GALS OF FUEL ON BOARD AT THE LAST TAKEOFF. THE CAPACITY OF THE TWO MAIN INBOARD TANKS IS 25 GALS EACH. THE TIP TANKS HOLD 17 GALS EACH. THE PLT INDICATED IN HIS STATEMENT THAT DURING HIS PREFLIGHT INSPECTION THE LEFT MAIN TANK WAS FILLED TO THE FILLER NECK WHILE THE RIGHT MAIN TANK WAS BELOW THE TAB.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX87LA062
- Event ID
- 20001213X35381
- Case number
- LAX87LA062
- 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 1986-12-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e941f89d0130d6f3d1bcf18e3de9f66604a5b85d68e1c7f1430dd4fa762a887c; retrieved 2026-09-22T01:07:30.242Z.