LAX01FA290 · Piper PA-32-301T
Piper PA-32-301T · Accident: loss of engine power during takeoff
From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL) to Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01FA290
- 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-32-301T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N9288X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL), Fullerton, CATo Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with a fence during an aborted takeoff. The pilot flew to Fullerton on Tuesday, August 21, and noted no discrepancies. The airplane was full of fuel, and everything checked normal during preflight, taxi, and engine run-up. During the departure, the pilot applied full throttle and noted 38.5 inches of manifold pressure at 2,500 rpm. He crosschecked instruments and his alignment. He was approaching midfield and noted his airspeed was above 65 knots, but not increasing. The manifold pressure looked the same, but the rpm was below 2,500; he thought it had dropped about 100 rpm. The airplane did not feel or sound like it was accelerating. He had not detected any hesitation in the engine, and did not hear any metallic sounds. He elected to abort the takeoff as he passed midfield and pulled the throttle back. He was unable to stop on the runway and collided with an airport boundary fence about 20 feet past the end of the runway shearing off the landing gear and substantially damaging the left wing. During post accident examination of the airplane, the pilot started the engine using his normal procedures. The propeller cycled normally, and both magnetos dropped 50 rpm on the magneto check. The pilot ran the engine up to full takeoff power, and all instruments, including manifold pressure and rpm, went to their red (maximum) limit marks. The pilot reduced power to idle and then ran the engine back to full power with no anomalies noted. The pilot secured the engine using his normal procedures with no difficulties encountered.
Probable cause
The engine lost power for unknown reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01FA290
- Event ID
- 20010913X01938
- Case number
- LAX01FA290
- 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: e80b5941bdff3b53e18f12fdcdd1a0e0fc787f3c2ddcac55b77130b2a65c56ea; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:37:15.268Z.