MIA04LA111 · Robert J. Labonte Defiant
Robert J. Labonte Defiant · Accident: nose gear collapsed during landing
From Massey Ranch Airpark (X50) to Deland Municipal Sidney H Taylor Field (KDED)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA04LA111
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Robert J. Labonte Defiant
- Aircraft type
- Robert J Labonte DEFIANT
- 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
- N369BL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Massey Ranch Airpark (X50), New Smyrna Bch, FLTo Deland Municipal Sidney H Taylor Field (KDED), DeLand, FL
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Pilot in command › Gear down and locked, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the flight proceeded to the destination airport area where he lowered the retractable nose landing gear during the base leg to land on runway 05. The flight turned final, touched down first on the main landing gears, then when he lowered the nose landing gear to the runway, it appeared to hold for an instant then collapsed. The airplane slid a distance then came to rest upright; he secured the airplane then both he and the passenger evacuated it. The nose was raised from the runway, the nose landing gear manual gear extension/retraction handle was lowered and locked into position, which locked the nose landing gear into the down and locked position. There is no nose landing gear down and locked light indication in the cockpit; he could see the nose landing gear was extended. He further reported there was no failure of the nose landing gear retraction/extension components, and the nose gear collapse was not a rigging issue but rather his failure to push forward on the retraction/extension handle with enough force.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to fully extend the nose landing gear resulting in collapse of it during the landing roll. A contributing factor in the accident was the lack of a nose landing gear down and locked indicator.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA04LA111
- Event ID
- 20040729X01106
- Case number
- MIA04LA111
- 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, coordinates. 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: 0ed5b21d1637033a1d3157a365da2ddd41ad5e4686cfafc761d043705f76470c; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:00:36.908Z.