LAX07CA165 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Mineral Canyon Strip (UT75) to Canyonlands Regional Airport (CNY)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07CA165
- 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 PA-28-140
- 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
- N8598N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mineral Canyon Strip (UT75), Moab, UTTo Canyonlands Regional Airport (CNY), Moab, UT
- 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
- 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/mush
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, delayed
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not obtained/maintained
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 descended into a river during the initial climb from a private airstrip. During the departure roll, the airplane's landing gear followed contours in the soft, uneven terrain that made up the dirt strip. The airplane accelerated slowly and the pilot realized that he would be unable to abort the takeoff, as brush and low trees were located adjacent to the end of the runway surface. The airplane became airborne and remained in ground effect. The pilot maneuvered the airplane in a right turn to avoid the brush and proceed toward the lower terrain near the river. The pilot physically detected a stall buffet and lowered the nose in an effort to arrest the imminent stall. The airplane descended into the river, coming to rest in shallow water adjacent to a sand bar. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine. He estimated the density altitude was at least 7,000 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to obtain and maintain an adequate airspeed that resulted in a stall/mush. Also causal was the pilot's failure to abort the takeoff in a timely way. A factor in the accident was the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07CA165
- Event ID
- 20070628X00832
- Case number
- LAX07CA165
- 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: 89cd76c3007961ca593253c06494249f8c92758f17adbb33d87d246250606574; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:31:13.387Z.