LAX06FA089 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Byron Airport (C83) to Visalia Municipal Airport (VIS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06FA089
- 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
- 4 · 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-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N7291Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Byron Airport (C83), Byron, CATo Visalia Municipal Airport (VIS), Visalia, 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 base
- 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
- 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
- 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 stalled while the pilot was turning from the base leg to final at his home based airport and impacted the ground in an uncontrolled descent. The airplane came to rest 410 feet from the approach end of the active runway. The ground scars and wreckage deformation signatures indicated the ground impact occurred with a high vertical component and very little horizontal energy. Night visual meteorological conditions existed with calm winds. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any mechanical anomaly to preclude normal operation of the engines or the airplane control systems. No personal flight records were located for the pilot. Based on interviews with acquaintances and family members, the pilot flew often. On his most recent Federal Aviation Administration airman medical application, dated about 1 year prior to the accident, he noted a total flight time of 5,700 flight hours with 75 hours flown in the past 6 months. Review of the pilot's medical records from his personal physician revealed that the pilot had been experiencing back pain that seemed to significantly interfere with his ability to sleep. The toxicological results were positive for extremely high levels of doxylamine, a highly sedating over-the-counter antihistamine, often used in sleep aids such as Unisom Sleep Tabs. The substance had likely accumulated due to daily use and/or use in excess of the maximum recommended dose. The pilot was likely having difficulty obtaining adequate and/or qualitative sleep.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during the landing approach, which resulted in a stall and uncontrolled descent. Contributing factors to the accident were the pilot's impairment due to his prolonged use of a highly sedating over-the-counter sleep aid and fatigue due to lack of sleep.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06FA089
- Event ID
- 20060120X00103
- Case number
- LAX06FA089
- 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 2006-01-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 053b24e10a89ce4e9fb621d013253bca549382dcf0db6a396021da02696b60c5; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:36:35.601Z.