LAX03LA113 · Piper PA24
Piper PA24 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Stellar Airpark (P19) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA113
- 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
Piper PA24
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA24
- 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
- N842PS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stellar Airpark (P19), Chandler, AZTo 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 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 engine power
- 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) › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated flight instructor (CFI) reported he was providing instruction to a student in preparation for a private pilot certificate. The CFI simulated a loss of engine power by retarding the throttle, and the student made an approach to land on a runway. Prior to actual touchdown, the CFI terminated the simulation and instructed the student to add power and climb. The CFI stated that the engine did not immediately respond, and the airplane continued to descend, hitting the runway hard. Shortly after runway contact, the engine responded with full power, and the CFI elected to abort the landing. An airborne inspection of the landing gear disclosed that the landing gear would not extend completely, and the CFI elected to make a gear-up landing at another airport with rescue facilities. The airplane landed uneventfully gear-up, but received structural damage.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's delayed remedial action during a go-around, which resulted in an inadvertent touchdown and hard landing. Factors associated with the accident are a momentary loss of engine power, and the inadvertent touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA113
- Event ID
- 20030321X00366
- Case number
- LAX03LA113
- 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: 9c53b413079090b440672b1fc2113c05399d831b042a0394336bc0a7eeac91f4; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:30:31.847Z.