MIA97LA238 · Piper PA-34-200
Piper PA-34-200 · Accident: hard landing
From Leesburg International Airport (LEE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA238
- 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-34-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N55322
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Leesburg International Airport (LEE), Leesburg, FLTo 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After departure the pilot noted that the 'gear unsafe warning light stayed on after [the] gear was retracted.' The pilot said he, 'checked and found [the] circuit breaker for [the] gear hydraulic motor popped.' He reset the circuit breaker and cycled the landing gear down, at which point he noted that 'only 2 green lights illuminated for the main gear.' The nose gear light was out. He then switched bulbs and determined that the bulb was 'good.' He then pulled the emergency gear extension with the gear handle in the down position and he said that he 'still only had 2 green lights for main gear.' The pilot circled the airport due to the problem he was having extending the nose landing gear, and was advised by the tower that that the nose gear appeared to be in midway position. He then made an approach and landing on runway 24. The airplane landed hard on the main landing gear, and a wing struck the ground. The airplane was placed on jacks and the landing gear was examined. The nose gear was extended by hand, it was revealed that the steering ball was outside of its track, causing the nose gear not extend.
Probable cause
a hard landing resulting in a wing contacting the runway. A factor in this accident was the nose landing gear would not extend due to the steering ball being off its track.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA238
- Event ID
- 20001208X08713
- Case number
- MIA97LA238
- 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: b44824455dc6a7bd31ace4ceb54223b50f964638971a7b4769672e4e48843b34; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:47:11.844Z.