MIA06LA015 · Piper PA-28R-180
Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (KOPF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA06LA015
- 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-180
- 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
- N4652J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (KOPF), Opa-Locka, FLTo 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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(cfi) › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Altitude, inattentive
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During climbout after takeoff while flying at an airspeed greater than 80 mph, the certified flight instructor (CFI) and pilot rated student reported that the landing gear would not retract. The CFI checked the cockpit trying to troubleshoot the problem and after looking outside, realized the airplane was very low. The airplane impacted grass on the north side of the runway causing the left main landing gear to separate and the nose and right main landing gears to collapse. The airplane came to rest upright and a small postcrash fire damaged the rear portion of the engine. Examination of the airplane following recovery revealed the landing gear selector handle was in the up position, and only the landing light circuit breaker was tripped/popped. Testing of the diaphragm of the landing gear auto extend system revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction. When electrical power was applied to the airplane and the landing gear selector handle was placed in the down position, components of the landing gears moved towards the down position. The airplane "Owner's Handbook" indicates the pressure sensing device in the landing gear system prevents "...the gear from retracting at airspeeds below approximately 85 mph with full power, though the selector switch may be in the up position. This speed increases with reduced power and/or increased altitude." The handbook also indicates, "Manual override of the device is provided by an emergency gear lever located between the front seats to the left of the flap handle. The emergency gear lever, when held in the raised position, can be used to override the system, and gear position is controlled by the selector switch regardless of airspeed/power combinations."
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot-in-command/CFI to maintain control of the airplane and his inattentiveness to the altitude while troubleshooting the landing gear system resulting in the in-flight collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA06LA015
- Event ID
- 20051115X01840
- Case number
- MIA06LA015
- 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: 5c76e9ec49207982993aed9dc692acefa8fab1499841a673965b827e008dd35f; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:15:32.972Z.