LAX07CA282 · Piper J5A
Piper J5A · Accident while standing
From Turlock Municipal Airport (O15) to Oakdale Airport (O27)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07CA282
- 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 J5A
- Aircraft type
- Piper J5
- 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
- N38234
- Operator
- Art L. Delano · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Turlock Municipal Airport (O15), Turlock, CATo Oakdale Airport (O27), Oakdale, 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
- Standing · engine(s) start-up
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Miscellaneous eqpt/furnishings, aircraft tie-down(s) › Not engaged
- Pilot in command › Tie down, not performed
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 turned off the fuel selector prior to starting the engine and he forgot to turn it back on during taxi for takeoff. The engine lost all power and stopped. The airplane was not equipped with a starter. When the pilot hand propped the engine for a restart the airplane was not securely tied down, and the throttle was not at idle. The engine started and revved up. The pilot attempted to restrain the airplane by holding on to it, and he was injured in that endeavor. The unoccupied airplane became airborne and climbed about 200 feet above the ground. Thereafter, it banked right and descended into a corn field next to the airport.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly and adequately tie down the airplane during the engine start operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07CA282
- Event ID
- 20071026X01670
- Case number
- LAX07CA282
- 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: b5a14d90bc19df6b2a19e0845406d0fe3159fe819d5a22d2df360ea13de21ea2; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:23:11.389Z.