LAX02LA139 · Beech 76
Sierra Academy of Aeronautics Beech 76 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (KOAK) to Petaluma Municipal Airport (O69)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA139
- 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
Beech 76
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 76
- 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
- N6636J
- Operator
- Sierra Academy of Aeronautics
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (KOAK), Oakland, 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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 control in flight
- 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(cfi) › Altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the instructional flight, the airplane collided with the ground and collapsed the landing gear during a practice single engine go-around. The flight instructor stated that he had the student do a practice single engine VOR approach to the airport in VFR conditions. The right engine was set to zero thrust for the procedure and the winds were straight down runway 29. They overflew the runway during the approach and circled to enter right traffic. During the approach he had decided to have the student do a single engine go-around. He stated that in hindsight he issued the go-around command at too low an altitude. The airspeed was above Vmc during the go-around; however, due to the low altitude at maneuver initiation, the airplane inadvertently touched down with full power on the left engine, causing the airplane to begin veering to the right. It became airborne again in a nose high, yawing, and right rolling attitude. At this point, he assumed the controls and reduced the power on the left engine. The airplane then settled to the ground in the nose high, yawed, and banked attitude with the right main gear off the pavement. The right main gear and nose gear collapsed. The instructor said that after thinking about the event, he believes that neither he nor the student were making aggressive enough control inputs to correct the situation in the early stages, and he may have waited too long before assuming control. He stated that there were no mechanical malfunctions or system failures with the airplane.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's decision to execute a simulated single engine go-around at an altitude insufficient to preclude the inadvertent ground contact of the airplane and the resultant loss of directional control. The flight instructor's delayed remedial action and inadequate supervision of the flight are also causal.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA139
- Event ID
- 20020420X00560
- Case number
- LAX02LA139
- 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 2002-04-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 55d0423f78b7a37c0494be4c80cf0443b2781199e50762b05d59a7a5062e7a0f; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:59:58.600Z.