CHI07IA067 · Piper PA-46-500TP
American Book Piper PA-46-500TP · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Monroe County Airport (BMG) to Smith Field (SMD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07IA067
- 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
- Incident
- 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-46-500TP
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N4185L
- Operator
- American Book
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monroe County Airport (BMG), Bloomington, INTo Smith Field (SMD), Fort Wayne, IN
- 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
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Landing gear, nose gear assembly › Fatigue
- Landing gear, nose gear assembly › Separation
- Manufacturer › Acft/equip, inadequate design
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that during landing at the conclusion of a personal flight, the airplane turned abruptly to the left and went off the side of the runway. The landing gear encountered muddy terrain, and the nose landing gear collapsed. Inspection of the nose gear support structure by an NTSB materials engineer disclosed that the right nose gear attachment foot had fractured at the right engine support mount due to fatigue failure. The airframe manufacturer had an applicable service bulletin that recommended increased inspection of the failed area because of a history of cracking. The service bulletin had reportedly been complied with about 18 service hours prior to the nose gear failure, but portions of the failed component had not been completely stripped of paint as recommended to check for cracking. The existing service bulletin was superseded with another service bulletin that reduced the inspection intervals. The manufacturer has also developed a replacement part that, when installed, will end the repetitive inspection requirement of the failed component. Additionally, the old-style component is no longer available as a replacement part.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure/separation of the engine mount's nose gear actuator attachment foot, and the manufacturer's inadequate engine mount/nose gear actuator attachment design.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07IA067
- Event ID
- 20070221X00204
- Case number
- CHI07IA067
- 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: 842f769f47c2101f66e48c32e0dfa9e588e2fa6361f4c49c40d1304dc5590557; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:13:53.957Z.