CHI07LA056 · Piper PA-24-260B
Piper PA-24-260B · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From 2K0 · Monticello, IL to Scott AFB/Midamerica Airport (BLV)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07LA056
- 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-24-260B
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N9284P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2K0 · Monticello, ILTo Scott AFB/Midamerica Airport (BLV), Belleville, IL
- 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
- 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, main gear strut scissors › Separation
- Landing gear, main gear strut › Jammed
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Sheared
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after takeoff he selected landing gear-up, but the corresponding position light did not illuminate. He checked the landing gear motor circuit breaker and found it tripped. The pilot was unable to get the landing gear to fully extend or retract during subsequent attempts. The destination airport control tower verified that the landing gear was not fully extended during a fly-by after the pilot had attempted an emergency landing gear extension. The pilot decided to retract the landing gear as much as possible and perform a wheels-up landing in a grass area adjacent to a runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to a fuselage bulkhead during landing. Inspection of the airplane showed that the right main landing gear was partially extended with its wheel and lower strut assembly rotated in the wheelwell. The bolt that attached the upper and lower portions of the torque link assembly was sheared in half. The lower torque link was jammed against the wheelwell structure, which restricted the movement of the entire landing gear assembly. The bolt fracture features were consistent with shear overstress, as a result of torsion during the action of the torque link assembly. The bolt fracture face did not contain any evidence of fatigue cracking. The separated bolt sections were seized within the upper and lower torque links, as a result of surface corrosion.
Probable cause
The failure of the torque link bolt which resulted in the right main landing gear strut scissors separating and becoming jammed in the wheel well. Contributing to the accident was the seized torque link bolt due to surface corrosion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07LA056
- Event ID
- 20070129X00108
- Case number
- CHI07LA056
- 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: 7ed72db6914f9330f0d7ad2ebc456564c65079e779f73ddc1de4c3d098195ef8; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:06:31.789Z.