WPR11LA113 · Piper PA-30
Tower General Construction Piper PA-30 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Big Bear City Airport (L35) to Pacoima, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA113
- 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-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N64RJ
- Operator
- Tower General Construction
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Big Bear City Airport (L35), Big Bear, CATo Pacoima, 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 · climb to cruise
- 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 engine power (partial)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after takeoff the right engine lost power as he turned onto the left crosswind leg of the traffic pattern. He continued to turn onto the downwind leg, making sure to keep the airspeed above the single-engine control speed of 90 mph. The pilot’s last recollection was turning to final approach and seeing the runway. A witness in the area reported hearing the sound of an engine popping and backfiring before the airplane started the takeoff roll. The airplane subsequently impacted the roof of a private residence located about 900 feet from the runway threshold. The airplane came to rest inverted in the front yard.
The airplane had recently undergone maintenance, which included the overhaul of both engines. The pilot had flown the airplane into the airport the day before and, after landing, called the maintenance facility to report that the right engine was running rough. A mechanic was not available to help him and he was told that he should not fly the airplane.
A postaccident examination of both the right and left engines revealed no evidence of mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. A global positioning system (GPS) unit was recovered and downloaded. The information indicated that the airplane continued to climb on the downwind leg to pattern altitude and then descended and reduced power to final approach. The last heading was aligned with the runway with a ground speed of 76 miles per hour and 1,400 feet east of the landing threshold. The pilot likely allowed the airspeed to decrease below the single-engine control speed and did not maintain sufficient altitude to clear the house while on final approach.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain the minimum single-engine control speed while on final approach for landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to fly with a known deficiency in one engine and a loss of power in that engine for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination did not reveal any mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA113
- Event ID
- 20110130X15517
- Case number
- WPR11LA113
- 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: e989bd4baa27d611d13e29a75c24a06f25dd4974424a665c52f9030adf167b12; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:43:13.106Z.