LAX01LA097 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of engine power during landing
From Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS) to Petaluma Municipal Airport (O69)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA097
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-24-250
- 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
- N8286P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS), Santa Rosa, CATo Petaluma Municipal Airport (O69), Petaluma, 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
- Landing
- 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
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Mixture control, linkage › Disengaged
- Unqualified person › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During landing, the engine lost power. The airplane collided with trees, and made a hard landing in an open dirt field in the ensuing forced landing. On the downwind leg for landing, the pilot lowered the landing gear, and the engine began to run rough. He noted that the landing gear stopped about halfway down. He attempted to add power, but did not receive a corresponding power increase, and set up for an emergency landing. A visual external examination of the engine revealed that the mixture cable was entangled in the nose landing gear. When the landing gear was lowered the mixture cable was pulled out of its sleeve, which allowed the engine to be in a full lean position. Mixture, throttle, and propeller cables were recently installed by the pilot and his two partners. The pilot and his partners were not certificated A & P mechanics, and a certified mechanic had not returned the airplane to service after the cable installation. The last entry in the logbook was made 6 months prior to the accident,.
Probable cause
Failure of non-airframe and powerplant mechanic/certificated owners to properly install a new mixture cable that became entangled in the nose landing gear during its extension for landing, resulting in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA097
- Event ID
- 20010222X00497
- Case number
- LAX01LA097
- 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, coordinates. 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: 6bef39b2bd4fad717890f451c0e0cb7e7fd91e50cfb48ab40e9a101de6a7b843; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:09:54.857Z.