LAX06CA020 · Piper PA-44-180
North Aire Piper PA-44-180 · Accident: nose gear collapsed during landing
From Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06CA020
- 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-44-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-44
- 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
- N8154H
- Operator
- North Aire
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC), Prescott, AZTo 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane experienced a nose landing gear collapse while on the landing roll. The certified flight instructor (CFI) reported that she was performing the landing in the multiengine airplane. The student kept his hands on the control yoke in an attempt to follow along with the instructor and feel her control inputs. While approaching the runway surface, the instructor configured the airplane for a power-off landing and retarded the throttles. She noted that all three landing gear lights in the cockpit were illuminated green in indication that landing gear was in a down and locked position. She confirmed this configuration visually by looking at the reflection of the extended landing gear in a small mirror located on the wing. Upon touchdown, the main landing gear made contact with the runway and the student pilot began to reach for the landing gear handle thinking that it was the flap handle. The instructor waved her hand to block him and told him "no." The nose landing gear collapsed and the airplane slid on the nose. After the airplane came to rest the instructor noted that the landing gear handle was in the "down" position. The student pilot stated that he did not touch the landing gear handle. A mechanic repairing the airplane reported that the landing gear and linkages were all intact with no anomalies noted. The actuator could not be tested due to the extent of the damage.
Probable cause
The nose landing gear collapsing during the landing roll for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06CA020
- Event ID
- 20051207X01947
- Case number
- LAX06CA020
- 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: 3216a46ce247ea1b731a243954e60321fd86145a2add7b9be28ef9ccccf9fbc1; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:16:41.780Z.