LAX02LA065 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From Oceano County Airport (L52) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA065
- 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
- N328EJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oceano County Airport (L52), Oceano, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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, cable › Not secured
- Mixture control, cable › Snagged
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane lost engine power in the traffic pattern and collided with an airport perimeter fence when it landed short of the runway. The pilot reported that while on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, he lowered the landing gear. He heard a loud bang from the firewall area, and the instrument panel caved in. The engine lost power, and he maneuvered the airplane towards the airport. The airplane touched down about 500 to 1,000 feet short of the runway, and collided with an airport perimeter fence. A post accident examination of the airplane revealed that the mixture control cable separated at the mixture control arm. The engine control bracket, part number 21189-00, was missing. Without the bracket, the mixture control cable hangs freely down below the engine, where the nose gear is located when in the retracted position. A kink in the mixture cable indicated that it became caught on a Zerk fitting located on the pivot point of the nose landing gear when the nose gear was extended to the down position. This resulted in the mixture control cable separating from the mixture control arm on the carburetor. Maintenance records revealed that the airplane was about 2 months overdue for an annual inspection.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the separation of the mixture control cable from the mixture control arm of the carburetor. The mixture cable separation was due to maintenance personnel's failure to secure the mixture control cable away from the nose landing gear, which resulted in the cable snagging during gear extension. A factor in the accident was the airplane being overdue for an annual inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA065
- Event ID
- 20020115X00075
- Case number
- LAX02LA065
- 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: e0bfb760b0b0e74501d20d3e1e621dbad3404b9aab0065f2b493f6d90609d73e; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:12:08.759Z.