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Atlas / NTSB / LAX88LA054

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event LAX88LA054

1987-11-24 SAN CLEMENTE, California, United States Airport · SNA None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Factual narrative

A PARTIAL LOSS OF ENG POWER OCCURRED WHILE THE STUDENT PLT WAS ON A SOLO X-COUNTRY FLT. HE APPLIED CARB HEAT, BUT TO NO AVAIL. THE ENG CONTINUED TO RUN ROUGH & THE PLT MADE AN EMERGENCY LANDING ON UPWARD SLOPING TERRAIN. DURING THE LANDING ROLL, THE NOSE GEAR HIT A HOLE IN THE DIRT & THE ACFT NOSED OVER. AN EXAM OF THE ENG DISCLOSED THAT THE #3 EXHAUST VALVE RETAINING NUT HAD BACKED OFF UNTIL THE VALVE WOULD NOT OPERATE AS THE CRANKSHAFT WAS ROTATED. DURING MAINTENANCE ON THE PREVIOUS DAY, THE #3 VALVES HAD BEEN ADJUSTED. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1987_LAX88LA054.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (maintenance). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗