LAX03LA265 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From L84 · Lost Hills, CA to Kettleman City, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA265
- 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 PA-18-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N2567L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L84 · Lost Hills, CATo Kettleman City, 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
- 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
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Ground loop/swerve, not corrected
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane veered off the runway and nosed over during a precautionary landing at a private airstrip. The landing was precipitated by a partial loss of engine power. The pilot stated that 5 minutes after departure, at an altitude of 500 feet, he heard "a loud noise" from the engine with an ensuing reduction in power. By manipulating the carburetor heat control he regained some power. He landed at the first available landing site, which was a small private airstrip. During the landing roll the airplane veered right, the pilot corrected to the left, and the airplane departed the runway and into soft ground on the left side of the airstrip. The airplane nosed over onto its back. Meteorological data recorded at the nearest reporting station at the approximate time of the accident show that the temperature was 95 degrees Fahrenheit, with a dew point of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. A standard carburetor icing chart indicated that at those temperature and dew point levels, light carburetor icing was possible when in the glide or cruise power configurations. Under the supervision of a FAA inspector, an Airframe & Powerplant mechanic examined the engine and found no anomalies. The mechanic was then able to start the engine and achieved 800-900 rpm before shutting the engine down due to vibrations caused by the bent propeller.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain directional control during a precautionary landing. The reason for the partial loss of engine power was undetermined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA265
- Event ID
- 20030828X01424
- Case number
- LAX03LA265
- 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. 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: 2429e5cb79c2f6e95088988c75470738bf925e1eac54acd110c88c3a19ff8d10; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:39:10.890Z.