LAX06CA115 · Cessna 172M
French Valley Aviation Cessna 172M · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From French Valley Airport (F70) to French Valley Airport (F70)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06CA115
- 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
Cessna 172M
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N80859
- Operator
- French Valley Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From French Valley Airport (F70), Murrieta, CATo French Valley Airport (F70), Murrieta, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 › Mixture, improper use of
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 in a field adjacent to the airport during an attempted takeoff. The purpose of the solo flight was for the student pilot to perform practice touch-and-go takeoff and landings. After completing a normal takeoff, he continued around the traffic pattern and then preformed a normal landing. During the landing rollout he retracted the flaps, input full throttle, and pushed the mixture control partially forward, leaving it out about 7/8 inch. The airplane lifted off the runway surface and climbed to about 50 to 100 feet above ground level (agl), with an airspeed of about 60 knots. The airplane was not able to maintain the airspeed and the student pilot thought the engine was only producing partial power. While performing a precautionary landing in an open field the airplane landed hard. Post accident examinations by both the operator and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector revealed no evidence of engine or airframe anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The FAA inspector stated that the signatures on the spark plugs indicated a very lean condition. An engine run was conducted the day following accident and the FAA inspector ran the engine noting no discrepancies.
Probable cause
a partial loss of engine power resulting from the student pilot's mismanagement of the mixture control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06CA115
- Event ID
- 20060314X00299
- Case number
- LAX06CA115
- 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: ce67faab492295e9879d2b9fc8037a6ecd5b3cfcbb3487633cfcffd979059a00; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:06:41.002Z.