CHI07LA002 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Madison Municipal Airport (MDS) to Southwest Minnesota Regional Airport - Marshall/Ryan Field (MML)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07LA002
- 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
- N71TA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Madison Municipal Airport (MDS), Madison, SDTo Southwest Minnesota Regional Airport - Marshall/Ryan Field (MML), Marshall, MN
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Landing gear, emergency extension assembly › Failure
- Landing gear, nose gear › Failure
- 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 was substantially damaged during landing when the nose gear failed to properly extend. The pilot reported that during touch-and-goes at MDS the nose gear would not extend prior to landing. The pilot diverted to MML and conducted a fly-by where ground personnel reported that the nose gear tire appeared to be cocked inside the gear well. The pilot reported that several attempts to lower the nose gear were unsuccessful. The pilot landed in the grass adjacent to the runway with the main gear extended and the nose gear retracted. Post accident investigation could not duplicate the problem. Operational checks of the landing gear retraction and extension after the accident were normal.
Probable cause
The failure of the nose gear to properly extend for undetermined reasons, which resulted in damage to the forward fuselage during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07LA002
- Event ID
- 20061106X01610
- Case number
- CHI07LA002
- 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: c5fd8a6336047e29689e2568e89a380a1628c2f92bbdb196d2fb2832699b918a; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:22:54.426Z.