WPR20LA135 · Piper PA-23-250
Landcare Aviation Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Chino Airport (KCNO) to Chino Airport (KCNO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA135
- 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
- 1 · 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-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N6521Y
- Operator
- Landcare Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chino Airport (KCNO), Chino, CATo Chino Airport (KCNO), Chino, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1967)
- 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
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident pilot and a second company pilot were flying in the same general area to photograph parcels of land. As the pilots were beginning their photography passes, the company pilot heard the accident pilot make distress calls on the radio. The accident pilot did not respond when asked to clarify the radio calls.
ADS-B data revealed the airplane approached the area to be photographed from the west, made a turn north to enter the area, then made a turn back to the southwest. The airplane then started a right descending turn about the time it intercepted its inbound course to the area. The last data captured the airplane, about 1,000 ft above the ground, about 177 knots groundspeed, in a 2,000 ft-per-minute descent, and about 950 ft northwest of the accident site. The camera system mounted in the airplane recorded the airplane, at that time, in a 31° nose-down attitude, and a 79° right roll.
The airplane struck steep mountainous terrain at a high speed, and the fuselage sustained substantial damage throughout. The wings, the vertical stabilizer, and the right side of the stabilator separated from the airplane. Examination of the aileron control by the NTSB materials laboratory revealed that a cable had broken under fatigue in a location near the aileron control bellcrank, likely resulting in a loss of control of the airplane. The airplane was maintained in accordance with the operator’s annual maintenance schedule; however, postaccident examination of the aileron control cable revealed that in addition to the fatigue break, multiple individual broken wires were discovered protruding from the strands, which would have required replacement of the cable upon discovery during required checks of the cable. The toxicology report for the pilot identified positive results for a cannabis metabolite; however, amounts discovered were unlikely to have been impairing. Given the circumstances of the accident, it is unlikely that the pilot’s use of cannabis contributed to the accident and that the pilot lost control of the airplane due to the fatigue failure of the aileron cable.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s failure to properly inspect and replace damaged aileron control cables, which resulted in fatigue separation of the aileron control cable and loss of control of the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA135
- Event ID
- 20200430X75227
- Case number
- WPR20LA135
- 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, cause areas. 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: 8e96bb8e67cd29e747a922c2d9935571b560680e23b8fab7b19f94a43aa81455; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:13:57.711Z.