LAX05LA324 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Jackpot Airport/Hayden Field (06U) to 0O5 · Davis, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA324
- 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
- 2 · 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
- N2333J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jackpot Airport/Hayden Field (06U), Jackpot, NVTo 0O5 · Davis, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 control in flight
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
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 impacted trees and terrain while presumably maneuvering toward a rapidly rising mountain ridgeline. The pilot was last seen refueling his airplane at the departure airport. After failing to arrive at his intended destination, an Alert Notice (ALNOT) was issued and search efforts were initiated. There were no air traffic control services rendered to the pilot and no radar data was available for the accident flight. The wreckage was located almost 2 months after the accident, with the pilot and passenger still on board. The airplane came to rest at the base of a stand of trees following a nose down, near vertical descent profile, which resulted in the aft crushing of the cockpit/cabin area. A pine tree, measuring about 8 inches in circumference, was located underneath and adjacent to the wreckage, and was cut into 36-inch logs, indicating an operative engine/rotating propeller. Plotting of the accident site on a topographic map indicated that the wreckage was located about 400 feet below a 9,000- to 9,300-foot ridgeline. The wreckage came to rest below a small gap in the rapidly rising ridgeline. A valley led to the rising ridge, and from the valley to the accident site, the average grade was 22 percent. From the accident site to the top of the ridge was an average grade of 20 percent.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed while maneuvering in mountainous terrain, which led to a stall and impact with trees and terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA324
- Event ID
- 20051101X01769
- Case number
- LAX05LA324
- 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: 49cc5f313192d0b22859bbbcbdb2e2cc829765ccf3812ea5390e783b79d5fdd6; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:54:38.358Z.