LAX07FA060 · Piper PA-28-161
Flying Vikings Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (BIH) to Undetermined
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07FA060
- 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-28-161
- 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
- N9141Y
- Operator
- Flying Vikings
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (BIH), Bishop, CATo Undetermined
- 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 · turn to reverse direction
- 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
- 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 › Altitude, low
- Flightcrew › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Flightcrew › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certified flight instructor (CFI) and the pilot under instruction (PUI) were going on a series of cross-country flights to allow the PUI to build flight time. Motorists observed the wreckage near a road that was in the flat bottom of a canyon whose floor width varied from an estimated 50 yards at the narrowest point to 200 yards at the widest point. The canyon made several left and right turns as it wound its way uphill in a general southeasterly direction. The canyon sides appeared to be several hundred feet higher than the accident site elevation and the rim appeared to be about 100 feet higher at the head of the canyon. An evaluation of the ground scars and impact signatures on the wreckage disclosed that the airplane was in a left turn attempting to reverse course out of the box canyon when the left wing tip dug into the ground. The airplane then tumbled so that it was pointing down canyon when it came to rest. No evidence of a mechanical failure or malfunction was noted during the post accident inspection.
Probable cause
The inadequate in-flight/planning decision of both pilots to fly up a box canyon at low altitude, and their failure to maintain clearance from the terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07FA060
- Event ID
- 20061228X01853
- Case number
- LAX07FA060
- 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: 539c6ee004f2da30b114fd5045d8af95c8593e49c6bcc974ee9e8c34bbf8b0d1; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:57:19.801Z.