DFW06CA153 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: hard landing
From Q26 · Brownfield, TX to Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport (MEZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW06CA153
- 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-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N950RM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q26 · Brownfield, TXTo Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport (MEZ), Mena, AR
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While executing a visual approach to runway 35, the 7,600-hour private pilot confirmed that the landing gear was extended. The pilot reported, that immediately after touching down on the 5,000-foot long, by 75-foot wide asphalt runway, he noticed a lower than usual nose attitude and applied aft pressure on the yoke which resulted in the airplane becoming airborne. The pilot added that "upon settling back onto the runway" the nose landing gear collapsed and the airplane veered to the left. According to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector, who examined the twin-engine airplane, the pilot "made a hard nose wheel landing which caused the airplane to bounce back into the air." The FAA inspector added that, "Upon another hard landing the nose wheel blew out and the left main gear collapsed." The pilot reported having accumulated approximately 300 hours in the same and model aircraft. The wind at the time of the mishap was reported as light and variable.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper landing flare resulting in a hard landing and his improper recovery procedures for a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW06CA153
- Event ID
- 20060719X00965
- Case number
- DFW06CA153
- 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: 4b51dfaa08cbf45c8eb70bdad09c68066b09b28e665a3f0dbe3084d14e73c5d0; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:49:23.169Z.