LAX04LA090 · Piper PA-28R-180
Inland Flight Training Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while taxiing
From California City Municipal Airport (L71) to QRC · Palomar, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA090
- 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-28R-180
- 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
- N3820T
- Operator
- Inland Flight Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From California City Municipal Airport (L71), California City, CATo QRC · Palomar, 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, continued
- Pilot in command › Proper alignment, 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 single-engine airplane encountered a ditch while taxiing for takeoff resulting in the collapse of the right main landing gear. The pilot stated that it was a dark night and he was relying on the landing light to help guide him down a taxiway parallel to the runway, as the airport was not equipped with taxiway edge lighting. While taxiing, the landing light suddenly turned off and he was unable to see his outside surroundings. The pilot inadvertently taxied off the left side of the taxiway, where the airplane encountered the ditch located in the dirt median. With the exception of the landing light, no pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane were reported.
Probable cause
the pilot's decision to continue taxiing during dark night conditions without an operable taxi/landing light or taxiway lights and his failure to maintain taxiway alignment. Contributing factors to the accident were the dark night light conditions, the failed landing light, and the lack of taxiway lights.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA090
- Event ID
- 20040205X00165
- Case number
- LAX04LA090
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-01-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5212f290fd45e7f2789b55f88224a3338561048b6c4931125bd0b00590b1631b; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:02:21.321Z.