NYC00LA018 · Piper PA-34-200
Piper PA-34-200 · Accident: nose gear collapsed during landing
From Hopedale Industrial Park Airport (1B6) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA018
- 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
- N16397
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hopedale Industrial Park Airport (1B6), Hopedale, MATo 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
- 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
- Nose 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
- Landing gear, nose gear › Unlocked
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Hopedale, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilots stated that the landing gear was extended prior to entering the traffic pattern. The approach was normal, and the airplane settled from about 5 feet in the air, onto the runway. The main gear touched down first, followed by the nose landing gear, then the nose landing gear collapsed. The airplane skidded approximately 600 feet, and came to rest on the runway. The nose landing gear actuator separated, but there was no other damage to the nose landing gear. Examination of the actuator, by a Safety Board Metallurgist, revealed a failure consistent with overstress. According to the airplane manufacturer, the nose landing gear could not be extended and locked, if only the actuator was damaged. Either the landing gear was improperly rigged, or the gear was still in travel as the airplane landed. According to maintenance records, the rigging of the landing gear was checked during the last annual inspection, and no maintenance work was performed on the landing gear between the annual inspection and the accident.
Probable cause
The nose landing gear was not locked in the extended position.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA018
- Event ID
- 20001212X20039
- Case number
- NYC00LA018
- 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: ad5066ee8f7243ef74fd178cf98bd339c32124692e43db7ebacf36f1911e5c16; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:47:51.595Z.