LAX02LA220 · Bushby Aircraft Mustang M-11
Bushby Aircraft Mustang M-11 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Apple Valley Airport (APV) to Calvada Meadows Airport (NV74)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA220
- 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
Bushby Aircraft Mustang M-11
- Aircraft type
- Bushby MUSTANG M-11
- 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
- N30430
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Apple Valley Airport (APV), Apple Valley, CATo Calvada Meadows Airport (NV74), Pahrump, NV
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Airframe, component or system 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
- Propeller system/accessories, blade › Separation
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The experimental airplane experienced a propeller blade failure and separation during cruise flight, resulting in airframe damage due to the severity of the vibrations from the out of balance propeller. While approaching the proximity of the airport, the pilot lowered the nose, in an effort to begin a gradual decent. About 9,500 mean sea level, the engine began to violently shake. He set the throttle to idle, the mixture in the off position, turned off the master switch, and put the fuel selector in the "off" position. He looked for a place to land and spotted a dry lake below. He configured the airplane in a slip and landed successfully. Post accident examination of the airplane revealed that 21 inches of a propeller blade tip had separated from the propeller body. The pilot thought that the consequential imbalance resulted in substantial damage to the airframe. The engine was left hanging by a 3/8-inch bolt. The propeller was a fixed pitch, aluminum two-bladed McCauley, part number 1A170/7074. The propeller had undergone a propeller strike prior to the accident, where it was shortened from 76 inches to 70 inches, and repitched.
Probable cause
the failure and separation of a propeller blade for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA220
- Event ID
- 20020712X01104
- Case number
- LAX02LA220
- 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: a7e3b904365e4d42a638478d629664138ddb543dae6b7cdebb6c19543c4aab1f; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:45:55.812Z.