LAX02FA234 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Kneeland Airport (O19) to California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport (ACV)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02FA234
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N8801N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kneeland Airport (O19), Kneeland, CATo California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport (ACV), ARCATA/EUREKA, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot landed at an airport (elev. 2,737 feet msl), which was located 17.5 nm southeast of his destination airport, prior to proceeding to final destination. While at the forestry facility, the pilot contacted a fellow company pilot, who was located at the destination airport, for a report on the weather conditions. According to various weather reports, at the destination airport (elev. 218 feet msl) the cloud bases were at 1,100 feet agl and cloud tops at 3,000 feet agl. Shortly after departure from the airport, the pilot was cleared by air traffic control (ATC) for an ILS approach to the destination airport's runway 32. For unknown reasons, the pilot cancelled the approach and requested to hold at a fix until he could be cleared for another approach. Approximately 16 minutes later, the pilot was cleared for another ILS approach to runway 32. ATC instructed the pilot to cancel his IFR clearance after landing, the pilot acknowledged the request, and that was the last communication from the pilot to ATC. The airplane impacted several trees, came to rest inverted on a 45-degree sloped ridge, and was destroyed by a post-impact fire. Two separated sections of the left wing were located wrapped around near the tops of 125-foot trees. The wreckage energy path measured approximately 300-feet in length on a measured magnetic heading of 190 degrees. During examination of the wreckage, no aircraft or engine anomalies were noted that would have prevented normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance with the trees while executing an instrument approach. Contributing factors were the clouds and obscuration weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02FA234
- Event ID
- 20020731X01271
- Case number
- LAX02FA234
- 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: fb13e60d1c83a7d2e39e70ee9d289a74c68875f0ff538326c6982c3725dc6853; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:56:44.594Z.