CHI89LA139 · Piper PA-32-301
Piper PA-32-301 · Accident: hard landing
From C81 to C81
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI89LA139
- 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-32-301
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N8301F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From C81To C81
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command › Go-around, not performed
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT WAS ON A FLT TO PRACTICE TAKEOFFS & LANDINGS FOR THE PURPOSE OF ACFT RE-FAMILIARIZATION BEFORE A PLANNED X-COUNTRY FLT. AS HE WAS LANDING, THE ACFT BOUNCED 3 TIMES. HE RPRTD THAT ON THE 3RD TOUCHDOWN, HE WAS 'NOT ABLE TO ACHIEVE SUFFICIENT FLARE TO AVOID TOUCHING DOWN NOSE WHEEL FIRST.' SUBSEQUENTLY, THE NOSE GEAR COLLAPSED & THE ACFT CAME TO REST, NOSE DOWN, ON THE RWY. DRG THE PREVIOUS 90 DAYS, THE PLT HAD ACCRUED 3.5 HRS IN THIS MAKE & MODEL OF ACFT; HOWEVER, SINCE 5/20/89, ALL OF HIS FLT TIME HAD BEEN IN ANOTHER TYPE OF ACFT WHICH HAD DIFFERENT LANDING CHARACTERISTICS.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S IMPROPER FLARE AND RECOVERY FROM A BOUNCED LANDING, AND HIS FAILURE TO GO AROUND (WHEN THERE WAS SUFFICIENT SPEED AND RUNWAY REMAINING). A CONTRIBUTING FACTOR WAS HIS LACK OF RECENT EXPERIENCE IN TYPE OF AIRCRAFT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI89LA139
- Event ID
- 20001213X28776
- Case number
- CHI89LA139
- 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: 2f7131279ebc2cca571065d12021cb63ab13846887acf5a144715719ccb5dac1; retrieved 2026-09-23T07:23:47.473Z.