WPR24LA207 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: low altitude operation/event en route
From Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (MOD) to Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (BIH)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA207
- 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 J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N3627N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (MOD), Modesto, CATo Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (BIH), Bishop, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 77 years (built 1947)
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had recently purchased the airplane and while flying through mountainous terrain, he mistakenly flew the airplane into a boxed canyon. He felt that the bigger engine would help the airplane climb over the mountains. He noticed the terrain was rising faster than expected but was unable to turn around due constrictive terrain. Realizing the airplane was not going to clear the ridge and concerned the airplane would stall if he attempted to turn around in the narrow pass, he looked for an area to make an off-airport landing. The pilot noticed an area that had a tree and elected to use the tree to take the brunt of the impact during landing. He reduced the airspeed and impacted the tree, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing and fuselage.
Additionally, the pilot reported that he was seated in the rear seat of the airplane and was not able to lean the engine due to the fuel mixture controls being located in the front seat of the airplane. He believed that the combination of high altitude and the inability to lean the airplane’s engine, degraded the airplane’s performance.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Postaccident site examination by local law enforcement revealed that the airplane impacted rugged, remote, mountainous terrain at an elevation 11,200 ft mean sea level (msl). The calculated density altitude was about 12,500 ft.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadvertent entry to a box canyon where the airplane could not outclimb the rising terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA207
- Event ID
- 20240624194539
- Case number
- WPR24LA207
- 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: 9eb569b9530e41828a898b551f0cf37c7f0cc6dbbea142fb9ed2cc8da1cb9e80; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:57:40.145Z.