LAX05LA253 · Malechek Q-200
Malechek Q-200 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (MOD) to Ramona Airport (RNM)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA253
- 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
Malechek Q-200
- Aircraft type
- Malechek Q-200
- 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
- N870BM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (MOD), Modesto, CATo Ramona Airport (RNM), Ramona, 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
- 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
- Propeller system/accessories, blade › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A propeller blade separated while the airplane was cruising at 9,500 feet mean sea level. The pilot then experienced a severe vibration and he shutoff the engine. During the ensuing forced landing, the airplane impacted objects short of the runway and came to rest inverted. A subsequent examination of the wood propeller revealed that it had separated at glue joints and delaminated. The pilot had torqued the propeller's attachment bolts to the 18-foot-pound value placarded on the propeller. The previous owner of the airplane had recommended torquing the bolts to 15-foot-pounds. A hair-line crack was found emanating from one of the propeller's attachment bolt holes. The FAA coordinator reported that the attachment bolt torquing sequence for the experimental airplane's propeller was not specified by the manufacturer.
Probable cause
the in-flight delamination and separation of a propeller blade for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA253
- Event ID
- 20050806X01178
- Case number
- LAX05LA253
- 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 2005-08-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6732bd5e2133e24eab365301277ca241dc3e7876fd9b7a4c03cc9dc10549bb70; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:04:55.736Z.