DEN07LA077 · Piaggio Industrie P180
Piaggio Industrie P180 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Teterboro Airport (TEB) to Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07LA077
- 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
Piaggio Industrie P180
- Aircraft type
- Piaggio Industrie P180
- 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
- N128SL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Teterboro Airport (TEB), Teterboro, NJTo Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL), Fort Lauderdale, 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
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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
- Copilot/second pilot › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The first officer was flying the airplane and was being radar vectored for an ILS (instrument landing system) approach to runway 09L. The flight was subsequently cleared for a visual approach to runway 09R. The airplane was 3 miles from the runway when the crew was informed that the wind was from 020 degrees at 7 knots. The CVR recorded crew confusion as to which runway or taxiway they were tracking towards. Both pilots thought that they had been aligned with a taxiway, not the runway. The tower instructed the flight to make a 360-degree turn. The captain took control of the airplane and subsequently the flight was cleared to join the right downwind leg for runway 09R. The captain then returned aircraft control to the first officer and continually cautioned him about excessive speed and altitude. The first officer said his speed was 120 KIAS. The last radar contact showed the airplane's ground speed at 138 knots.The captain said the airplane touched down on centerline and reverse thrust was selected. The airplane then began drifting or "pulling" to the left. The first officer attempted to correct with right rudder and then right brake. As the airplane decelerated to 60 knots, the captain engaged nose wheel steering and tried to help the first officer. The left wing then dropped and the airplane veered to the right. The captain thought they had "blown a tire." The left main landing gear collapsed and the airplane slid to a halt. The crew then evacuated the airplane. FAA inspectors and Piaggio representatives inspected the airplane and found the left main tire had blown out and separated from its rim, and fuel was leaking from the airplane onto the runway. The tire had a flat spot in the tread, with scuffing in an inboard-to-outboard direction. The left main landing gear retract actuator was fractured on the upper pivot pin. In the lower pivot area, the main gear "drag brace" was forced out of the mounting structure and bushing assembly. It was their opinion that only a strong impact with abnormal side load would cause the pivot actuator area to fail,inducing excessive bending loads on the main landing gear drag brace. This load condition could cause the tire to blow out. The crew later reported an abnormally large number of blown tires, and that the company had attributed these blowouts to "pilot error."
Probable cause
The first officer's loss of directional control during landing causing the left main gear to collapse. Contributing factors in this accident were the flight crew's excessive use of brakes causing the left main tire to blow out, and the captain's inadequate supervision of the first officer.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07LA077
- Event ID
- 20070327X00334
- Case number
- DEN07LA077
- 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: a0334ffe7417315807f8d9779e8b9c24b6e35ab8282b77342ffa14b4db37af9c; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:58:03.763Z.