LAX04CA238 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Lake Riverside Estates Airport (54CL) to Anza, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04CA238
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N9009J
- Operator
- Christopher R. Padilla · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Riverside Estates Airport (54CL), Anza, CATo Anza, 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
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Stall/mush
- 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
- Flightcrew › Airspeed, not maintained
- Flightcrew › Stall/mush, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › Distance/altitude, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, not maintained
- Pilot passenger › Control interference, attempted
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 landed hard and short of the runway, impacting a berm, then became airborne briefly before colliding with multiple obstacles. The pilot-rated passenger was flying the airplane and overshot the final approach course. The pilot took over the control of the airplane and continued the approach at 75 knots with one notch of flaps extended. The pilot said that while on short final, the airplane "experienced a severe downdraft" that pushed the airplane to the ground. The airplane landed short of the runway and impacted a berm, after which the pilot intended to keep the airplane on the ground and stop. During the hard landing, the pilot-rated passenger grabbed the controls, applied full power, and pulled aft on the control yoke in an attempt to abort the landing. As the pilot fought with the passenger for the controls, the airplane experienced a "power on stall" and drifted to the left before impacting the ground again multiple times. The pilot reduced engine power and stopped the airplane. The weather observation facilities closest to the accident airport reported the wind between 8 and 11 knots. The pilot reported there were no mechanical anomalies with the airplane and engine prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudged altitude and speed, which resulted in an undershoot and a collision with a berm. Also causal was the control interference from the passenger.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04CA238
- Event ID
- 20040717X00997
- Case number
- LAX04CA238
- 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: ada0443060a156b5c2b82bf369c2fdbc4584ecc4f928b037a8181d5c7eaafefb; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:20:22.804Z.