LAX07CA166 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: nose over during landing
From Quincy, CA to Quincy, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07CA166
- 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
Piper J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N98041
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Quincy, CATo Quincy, 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Nose over
- 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 › Brakes(normal), excessive
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 nosed over and came to rest inverted during the landing roll. The purpose of the flight was for the pilot to practice landings in an open pasture. The pasture was flat with a cover of grass about 5 inches in height. He began a normal wheel landing in the pasture. After touchdown he applied brake pressure and attempted to keep the tail up with the elevator control. He continued to apply brake pressure and as the airplane slowed, the tail rose upward. The airplane nosed over to inverted. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine. The tail and right wing sustained damage during the accident sequence.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive use of the brakes, which resulted in a nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07CA166
- Event ID
- 20070628X00830
- Case number
- LAX07CA166
- 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 2007-05-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6be0faea57a32f2ef22580124f8ac771b34512e45b88b79646ddaa9fa06cbc79; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:49:26.247Z.