LAX08CA188 · Piper PA-36-375
H & R Aerial Enterprises Piper PA-36-375 · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) while maneuvering
From Kingdon Airpark (O20) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08CA188
- 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-36-375
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-36
- 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
- N3859E
- Operator
- H and R Aerial Enterprises
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kingdon Airpark (O20), Lodi, 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- Defining eventThe 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 flying low over a grape vineyard to apply sulfur dust to the crop. He had made two application runs with no problems encountered. As he set up for the third run, he observed that the sulfur applied on the previous two runs had aggregated into a cloud and had drifted through the area in which he would be flying. He decided to continue the application run, and lost all visual contact with the ground as the airplane flew into the sulfur dust cloud. The left wing hit a grape trellis, which pulled the airplane down and to the left. The airplane traveled 150 yards on top of the grape trellises before stopping inverted on the ground. The pilot reported no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane during the flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight decision to continue the flight into an area of obscured visibility and his failure to maintain clearance above obstacles.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08CA188
- Event ID
- 20080714X01040
- Case number
- LAX08CA188
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 4b447c14717ed158bec92e2462910a0394ae156f8fe4719732ed4b249b4f6020; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:54:18.975Z.