LAX07LA280 · Root Sherpa
Root Sherpa · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Scappoose Industrial Airpark (SPB) to Scappoose Industrial Airpark (SPB)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA280
- 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
Root Sherpa
- Aircraft type
- Root SHERPA
- 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
- N1415B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scappoose Industrial Airpark (SPB), Scappoose, ORTo Scappoose Industrial Airpark (SPB), Scappoose, OR
- 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 final
- 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
- Flt control syst, elevator control › Fatigue
- Flt control syst, elevator control › Improper/poor weld
- Owner/builder › Maintenance, installation, 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 pilot was a potential buyer of the airplane and was flying it on short final approach. He said that he attempted to correct for a sink rate, which included pulling back full aft on the control stick to arrest the descent. The airplane's nose then abruptly pitched down about 45 degrees and the airplane struck the runway. A visual examination of the airplane's flight control system by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspectors revealed that the flight control stick gimbal mechanism had fractured and the control stick was separated from the mechanism. The flight control stick gimbal mechanism and a portion of the fuselage structure were shipped to the Safety Board's Materials Laboratory for a metallurgical examination. According to the metallurgical examination, the fatigue cracking of the fuselage tube structure in the area of the control stick gimbal mechanism emanated from the root of a weld in an area between tube joints. The Safety Board's senior metallurgist reported that the fatigue had propagated through approximately 30 percent of the wall thickness. The fatigue crack was located near an area of the fuselage tube that contained a 0.7-inch-long region of incomplete weld penetration at the root of the weld.
Probable cause
A loss of aircraft pitch control due to the fatigue failure of the fuselage tube structure at the flight control stick gimbal mechanism due to an incomplete weld penetration at the root of the weld.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA280
- Event ID
- 20070927X01464
- Case number
- LAX07LA280
- 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 2007-09-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6eb4c71400c1a144f8ef7b46d4f090d6be7f6a1e2626f7f8c6ba6a9d8e09fc68; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:43:58.850Z.