LAX05CA181 · Piper PA-28R-200
Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: hard landing
From Ryan Field (RYN) to Ryan Field (RYN)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05CA181
- 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
Piper PA-28R-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N55069
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ryan Field (RYN), Tucson, AZTo Ryan Field (RYN), Tucson, AZ
- 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
- 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
- Unknown › Flare, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the instructional flight in which landings were practiced, one or more touchdowns was firm, and the left wing sustained structural damage. The flight instructor stated that he had performed a total of 15-16 landings in the plane that day with two different students. The purpose of the second flight was to practice short field and 180-degree power off landings for the student's commercial practical exam. The 10th landing of that flight was a 180-degree power off landing that the CFI was demonstrating. He made a touch-and-go following a landing on the 1000-foot markers, and raised the landing gear after obtaining a positive rate of climb. After the gear were raised, the landing gear transition light was still illuminated. He cycled the gear a few more times without solving the problem. They made a full stop and both pilots visually inspected the gear. They could not find anything wrong with the switches and deferred the problem to maintenance. Maintenance personnel examined the gear system and found wing ribs buckled near the left main gear. This prevented the up-limit switch from closing, which prevented the light from functioning normally. They stated that either a hard landing or a landing with excessive side loading could have caused the damage.
Probable cause
the improper flare by an undetermined crewmember, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05CA181
- Event ID
- 20050624X00864
- Case number
- LAX05CA181
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-05-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1907c6403129a5c5a24b665454c06c7cdb2c21cf2dc5608cc90387ea88946152; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:55:39.402Z.