WPR23LA317 · Piper PA-24-260
Piper PA-24-260 · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL) to Brackett Field (POC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA317
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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-24-260
- 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
- N503JA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL), Fullerton, CATo Brackett Field (POC), La Verne, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1965)
- 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 · 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff the airplane began to shake violently with the control yoke moving rapidly forward and aft from stop to stop. The pilot was able to perform an on-airport emergency landing after shutting down the engine, but sustained hand injuries due to the extreme control forces and oscillations.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the stabilator structure in a manner consistent with it exhibiting aerodynamic flutter. Postaccident examination revealed that the stabilator tab actuator was disconnected from the control tab, and the bolt, nut, and washer that connected them were missing. The disconnection of the actuator allowed the tab surface to uncouple, which resulted in flutter and structural damage to the stabilator.
Circumferential scoring around the bolt hole within the tabs indicated that the bolt was likely loose for an undetermined period before failure. The nut had likely not been replaced since the airplane was manufactured almost 60 years before the accident, so its locking properties would have been significantly diminished.
Probable cause
The separation of the stabilator actuator from the stabilator tab, which resulted in pitch control surface flutter and structural damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA317
- Event ID
- 20230817192891
- Case number
- WPR23LA317
- 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: 43cbb488477db524e89b06d1ab805a904076a5ad485924884600e5f15d8eb450; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:00:59.449Z.