LAX07FA219 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07FA219
- 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-28-181
- 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
- N38137
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF), San Diego, CATo not recorded
- 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
- 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/spin
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Low altitude flight/maneuver, attempted
- Pilot in command › Maneuver, attempted
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates corrected after review: The narrative places the accident site in a box canyon "about 25 nautical miles (nm) from the departure airport" (MYF, San Diego), recorded as El Cajon, CA; the recorded latitude 33.97 is about 73 nm from MYF near Banning, and 32.97 at the same longitude is about 25 nm east of MYF near El Cajon (a one-digit error). No uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Radar data disclosed that the pilot flew the airplane from the departure airport toward the accident site, with the last recorded target at 610 feet above ground level (agl) over rising mountainous terrain. The floor of the radar coverage in the area was about 200 feet agl. The accident site was located at an elevation of about 2,293 feet mean sea level (msl) on the slope of a bowl-shaped box canyon about 25 nautical miles (nm) from the departure airport. In character, the canyon and surrounding hills were steeply sloped, averaging between 60 to 80 degrees, with the tops of the canyon terrain about 700 feet higher than the accident site elevation and 1,000 feet laterally in front of the wreckage. An analysis of the airplane's climb performance capability found that a lateral distance of 2 miles would be required to climb 700 feet. Ground scar analysis, impact signatures, and wreckage fragmentation patterns disclosed that the airplane impacted in a descending steep vertical nose down attitude traveling downslope. The impact geometry was consistent with the airplane encountering an accelerated stall while attempting a course reversal in the canyon. The width of the canyon immediately surrounding the wreckage measured about 1,250 feet. With a turn radius of 637.5 feet, and airspeed of 99 knots (maneuvering speed), the bank angle required for the airplane to complete a 180-degree turn was a minimum of 55 degrees. According to stall speed versus angle of bank data, the stall speed would be 55 knots at 55 degrees of bank. No evidence of mechanical malfunction or failure was found during a post accident examination of the airplane and engine. The pilot had accumulated 75 hours total flight experience, of which about 2 hours was in the same make and model as the accident airplane and acquired in the location of the departure airport.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate in-flight decision to attempt low altitude flight operations into a box canyon in mountainous terrain, and his failure to maintain an adequate airspeed while maneuvering to reverse direction, which led to an accelerated stall and spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07FA219
- Event ID
- 20070730X01043
- Case number
- LAX07FA219
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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 2007-07-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 82497ad2848e930690b31671e27a9ed0d5486e8f5ece94d5ef3f0c10f3ee0206; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:29:10.463Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: coordinates. The narrative places the accident site in a box canyon "about 25 nautical miles (nm) from the departure airport" (MYF, San Diego), recorded as El Cajon, CA; the recorded latitude 33.97 is about 73 nm from MYF near Banning, and 32.97 at the same longitude is about 25 nm east of MYF near El Cajon (a one-digit error).