FTW92LA121 · Piper PA-31-350
Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: gear collapsed during landing
From Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport (AMA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW92LA121
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N140RD
- Operator
- Winemiller, Eric W. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport (AMA), Amarillo, TXTo 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Gear collapsed
- 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
- Fluid, hydraulic › Leak
- Hydraulic system, seal › Failure, total
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Houston, TX, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT REPORTED TO THE TOWER A PROBLEM WITH THE AIRPLANE'S LANDING GEAR SYSTEM. A FLYOVER WAS PERFORMED AND A GEAR PROBLEM CONFIRMED. THE PILOT WAS CLEARED TO FLY AROUND THE TRAFFIC PATTERN. UPON TOUCHDOWN ON RUNWAY 04, THE NOSE AND RIGHT LANDING GEAR COLLAPSED. THE HYDRAULIC SYSTEM WAS FOUND DEPLETED OF FLUID AND THE SEAL FOR THE EMERGENCY GEAR EXTENTION HAND PUMP WAS FOUND TO BE THE SOURCE OF THE LEAK.
Probable cause
THE FAILURE OF THE HYDRAULIC SYSTEM SEAL AND THE SUBSEQUENT FLUID LEAK.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW92LA121
- Event ID
- 20001211X14435
- Case number
- FTW92LA121
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1992-04-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 976ddc2564fb260ce975828706627fcc394021787219c79dbe7869a60f5ac6cb; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:47:02.754Z.