LAX97LA222 · Piper PA-28R-201
Piper PA-28R-201 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA222
- 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
- 0
- 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-28R-201
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N6471C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF)To not recorded
- 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 · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Airspeed(vso), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
When the landing gear was selected down, only the main landing gear down indicator lights illuminated. The CFI reported that he made extensive attempts to extend the nose landing gear using both the normal and emergency procedures, however, each attempt was unsuccessful. The CFI further reported that while making his landing approach to the runway, he directed his student to turn the fuel selector to the off position. Simultaneously, the CFI moved the fuel mixture control to the idle-cutoff position as the aircraft was crossing the runway threshold. A videotape was taken by a witness to the accident sequence. Review of this tape disclosed that the aircraft made a near wings level, descending approach to the runway. At approximately 30 feet agl, the aircraft's nose oscillated up and down, followed quickly by the onset of a high vertical descent rate. At this point, the aircraft's stabilator was in what appeared to be an almost full nose up. The aircraft impacted the runway surface in a near level, slight right wing down attitude. Examination of the aircraft revealed that a nose gear down assist spring assembly had separated from an upper attach point on the strut and was tangled up in the strut support linkage, preventing the strut from free-falling to the down position.
Probable cause
the pilot-in-command's failure to maintain an adequate airspeed which resulted in a stall/mush.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA222
- Event ID
- 20001208X08179
- Case number
- LAX97LA222
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: f27279447051c9958fcbd5e1b9c107a48a8a1e17fa1b3559971ff0c0c5bf0736; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:24:43.137Z.