LAX07LA186 · Piper PA-34-200
Piper PA-34-200 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Van Nuys Airport (VNY) to Upland-Cable Airport (CCB)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA186
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-34-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N4463T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, CATo Upland-Cable Airport (CCB), Upland, 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
- 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
- Dual student › Airspeed(vmc), not maintained
- Dual student › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) was providing multiengine instruction to the pilot. They were in the traffic pattern, approximately 800 feet above ground level (agl), after completing several touch-and-go landings. The CFI stated that his regular method for setting up practice engine-out landings for a student was to close the mixture, allow the student to go through the process of controlling the airplane, and simulating the procedures to feather the inoperative engine's propeller. The instructor would then return the mixture to full rich, and verify engine operation. This would occur on downwind, and then the landing would be completed with the simulated inoperative engine at idle. On downwind, the instructor closed the mixture on the left engine. During this maneuver, the pilot turned the airplane left from base to final and the airspeed decreased. The airplane rolled sharply to the left and lost altitude. The instructor reduced both throttles and regained control of the airplane just as it collided with the roof of one house, bounced across another roof, and came to rest on top of a third house. The Federal Aviation Administration recommends that in-flight simulated engine failures at altitudes below 3,000 feet agl be introduced only by reduction of the throttle. Post-crash inspection of the engine and airframe found no anomalies that would have prevented normal operation.
Probable cause
Failure of the pilot under instruction to maintain the minimum single engine control airspeed (air) and directional control while turning to final approach. Also causal was the flight instructor's inadequate supervision and delayed remedial actions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA186
- Event ID
- 20070612X00713
- Case number
- LAX07LA186
- 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: e3465c0532444b753f771f6fcf814d8439e1f531b5b19b13a63693efddc9fe88; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:48:21.805Z.