LAX03FA102 · Mitchell CH-801
Mitchell CH-801 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Q94 · Rio Linda, CA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03FA102
- 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
- 2 · 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
Mitchell CH-801
- Aircraft type
- Mitchell CH-801
- 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
- N235RJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q94 · Rio Linda, 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
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
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 broke apart in flight, and the debris path was 2 miles long. The top surface of the right wing was the first item in the debris path. The next pieces were the vertical and horizontal stabilizers. They were approximately 400 feet away from the right wing, and 50 feet apart from each other. The remainder of the right wing was 800 feet past the stabilizers. The left wing was an additional 300 feet away. The fuselage was near the end of the debris trail. Rivet holes at separation points were elongated and/or deformed. Fracture surfaces were angular and irregularly shaped. The toxicology reports indicated the finding of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, the active substance in marijuana) and tetrahydrocannabinol carboxylic acid (THC-COOH), an inactive metabolite of marijuana) in the blood of both occupants. The levels of the substances are consistent with the smoking of at least one marijuana cigarette within about 12 hours of death in the case of the pilot, and 2 hours for the passenger. A few studies have shown impairment during the performance of demanding aircraft simulator tasks even 24 hours after smoking marijuana, and it is likely that the pilot was at least somewhat impaired at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
an in-flight structural failure due to the pilot exceeding the design limitations of the airplane. Drug impairment was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03FA102
- Event ID
- 20030312X00321
- Case number
- LAX03FA102
- 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: a792851ea85f2df77b30e5eb43ac09beb3df2cb23cd324545d1c426ba5a86a56; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:26:02.515Z.