WPR09FA192 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Whiteman Airport (WHP) to Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09FA192
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N7690P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiteman Airport (WHP), Los Angeles, CATo Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM), San Diego, 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the pilot's preflight weather briefing for the cross-country flight, he was informed that while a portion of his anticipated hour-long flight could likely be flown under visual flight rules, instrument meteorological conditions, including multiple cloud layers, could be expected approaching his destination. The destination area was covered by a marine cloud layer, with cloud tops of 5,500 feet. En route, the pilot cruised at 7,000 feet. Initially, all air traffic control (ATC) communications with the pilot were routine. An airport located about 6 miles from the accident site reported a broken sky condition at 2,500 and 3,100 feet, and an overcast sky condition at 4,800 feet. As the pilot entered this area, located about 29 miles north of his destination, he informed the terminal radar approach controller that he was descending from 6,200 to 4,000 feet msl. A radar controller acknowledged the pilot's statement. Two and one-quarter minutes later the radar controller instructed the pilot to descend to 2,600 feet, and "keep your speed up." About 5 seconds later, the pilot responded "two thous." The remainder of the pilot's transmission was either interrupted or not recorded, and there were no further communications with the pilot. A review of the recorded radar data and the wreckage distribution evidence indicated that the airplane broke apart after entering instrument meteorological conditions. The structural failure occurred while the airplane was descending at 6,000 feet per minute and in a clockwise turn. The subsequent examination of the airplane revealed that both wings failed in an upward (positive G) direction, consistent with a pilot-induced structural overload. Thereafter, a portion of the right wing impacted the stabilator's right side, which caused it to separate from the airplane. No evidence of any preexisting structural weakness was found during the examination of the heavily fire-damaged main wreckage.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control during an en route cruise descent through multiple cloud layers, resulting in an in-flight breakup.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09FA192
- Event ID
- 20090413X23002
- Case number
- WPR09FA192
- 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. 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: 367b8915c353105dd3166199fd4e9db9c7cf227a0a608ba603592e2ef7d1f1e0; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:03:08.156Z.