MIA06LA074 · Piper PA-44-180
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Piper PA-44-180 · Accident: nose gear collapsed during landing
From Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB) to Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA06LA074
- 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
- N938ER
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB), Bunnell, FLTo Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB), Daytona Beach, 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
- Directional control › Not possible
- Landing gear, nose gear assembly › Fractured
- Landing gear, nose gear assembly › Overload
- Manufacturer › Material defect
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The landing gear was confirmed to be down and locked, three green annunciator lights were noted, and the nose landing gear was visually seen to be down and locked. The airplane touched down, veered sharply to the left and departed the runway. It collided with a runway distance remaining sign, damaging the right wing. Post-accident examination revealed the nose landing gear had collapsed. The upper drag brace (that connects the nose gear to the fuselage) was fractured, and the pivot lug (that connects the upper brace to the lower brace) was fractured in two places. The pivot lug fractures were consistent with overload stress separations. At least 13 internal horizontal and parallel cracks were uncovered near the vertical centerline of the brace. The cracks followed the grain flow lines resulting from forging. Flow lines were longitudinal in the arm portion of the brace with a smooth, gently curving transition into the thicker portion of the lug. However, flow lines in the upper fracture were convoluted and tightly twisted. A laboratory-induced fracture of the brace revealed an irregular boundary with ductile overstress features interspersed along the edge of the crack. Low magnification revealed a smooth, undulating surface. High magnification revealed a fine granular texture. Energy dispersive x-ray spectra revealed an increased oxygen level on the crack surface.
Probable cause
Failure of the nose landing gear upper drag brace assembly due to overload acting on an undetected forging defect formed during the initial forging of the brace. A contributing factor in this accident was the runway distance remaining sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA06LA074
- Event ID
- 20060405X00394
- Case number
- MIA06LA074
- 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: 6397428a700b8f752e68d115be4cb6e545586d0a4619e0bb89e1443222350686; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:02:38.509Z.