MIA06LA002 · Piper PA-46-350P
Piper PA-46-350P · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Lovell Field) (KCHA) to Destin Executive Airport (KDTS)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA06LA002
- 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-46-350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N9199P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Lovell Field) (KCHA), Chattanooga, TNTo Destin Executive Airport (KDTS), Destin, 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Manufacturer › Acft/equip, inadequate design
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 reported that the landing seemed normal for a few seconds, and then the airplane started to swerve to the right. He tried to compensate with the application of hard left brake and full left aileron, but the airplane continued swerving to the right and departed the runway. The nose gear collapsed, and the airplane then slid approximately 300 feet on the main landing gear and the underside of the cowling before coming to a stop. Examination of the airplane revealed that the engine mount was fractured at the right nose gear actuator attach foot. Rust was visible on the fracture surface, indicating the crack was pre-existing. The crack was in the area that was the subject of a Piper Service Bulletin. The Service Bulletin required operators to inspect the engine mounts for cracks after every 100 hours of flight time, until the engine mount was replaced with a newer model which incorporated one-piece feet at the nose gear actuator attach points. The engine mount installed in the airplane was the original Piper design configuration (two-piece welded foot design). Review of the airplane's maintenance records indicated that the Service Bulletin had not been complied with at the most recent annual inspection conducted 89.1 flight hours prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The inadequate design of the engine mount which led to cracking of the mount resulting in a loss of directional control and collapse of the nose landing gear. A contributing factor was the failure of maintenance personnel to comply with a service bulletin to inspect the engine mount for cracks.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA06LA002
- Event ID
- 20051012X01622
- Case number
- MIA06LA002
- 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: 87afb48699fc67c4ffc086ed00b6dd072fc0410eb67dc1c0494768db8b7d3de7; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:19:29.006Z.