LAX02LA273 · Petrik Questair Venture
Petrik Questair Venture · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Jack Mc Namara Field Airport (CEC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA273
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Petrik Questair Venture
- Aircraft type
- Petrik QUESTAIR VENTURE
- 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
- N6UN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jack Mc Namara Field Airport (CEC), Crescent City, 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 final
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, 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
A flight instructor and student pilot, who were flying in another airplane, reported that the accident airplane rolled to the left and then descended straight down into the trees. The flight instructor reported hearing the pilot of the accident airplane report that he was on final approach for runway 17. The airplane impacted trees and the ground in a remote area about one mile short of the approach end of runway 17. The airplane was found inverted, wedged between trees. At 1256 PDT, the Crescent City automated weather observing station (AWOS) reported the wind 160 degrees at 8 knots, a broken ceiling at 600 feet AGL, 10 miles visibility, temperature 55 degrees Fahrenheit, dew point 50 degrees Fahrenheit and altimeter 30.06 inches of Mercury. The aircraft impacted trees about 25 feet above the ground and continued forward for about 30 feet before coming to rest inverted. The left wing was separated from the aircraft and was found in a tree about 20 feet above the main wreckage with the left aileron on the ground below the wing. The right wing was still attached to the fuselage with the aileron separated and lying below the wing. Both wings exhibited evidence of a long time fuel leak. It was not determined if there was fuel in the engine fuel lines due to the lines being broken at all major attachment points. Likewise, it was not determined if there was fuel in the wing tanks. The last recorded fuel purchase was made on July 9, 2002 for 26.83 gallons of 100LL fuel. One of the propeller blades had very little damage, while the other blade exhibited a slight aft bend.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control for undetermined reasons. A contributing factor was low ceiling.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA273
- Event ID
- 20020916X01612
- Case number
- LAX02LA273
- 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: a63506de8352ae1546b71f85d5aa0fcf7be662cf7242ddaf9f96732f12749adb; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:53:08.632Z.