LAX01LA159 · Ryan ST3KR
Ryan ST3KR · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From French Valley Airport (F70) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA159
- 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
Ryan ST3KR
- Aircraft type
- Ryan ST3
- 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
- N46503
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From French Valley Airport (F70), Murrietta, CATo not recorded
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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 › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Murrieta, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, as he taxiied the low-wing, tailwheel equipped aircraft into the run-up area, the underside of the left wing struck a 4-foot-tall pole protecting a fire hydrant. The pilot was seated in the rear cockpit of the tandem-seating aircraft. He reported that the presence of another aircraft entering the run-up area at the same time made it necessary to alter his taxi route and, after he turned sharply, the low post was too close to be visible from the rear cockpit. The pilot also noted that the hydrant was one of two positioned within the operational area of run-up pad and there were no hazard markings painted on the asphalt around the hydrants.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain an adequate visual lookout during taxi to avoid striking a post. A factor in the accident was the inadequate marking of the obstruction by airport personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA159
- Event ID
- 20010508X00906
- Case number
- LAX01LA159
- 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: 9ffd847e4da9e188f1b991b15c07921530aa0f0e0ca194b09dec888cd64b886b; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:00:50.777Z.