MIA07LA076 · Piper PA-46-350P
Piper PA-46-350P · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Treasure Cay Airport (MYAT) to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (KFXE)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA07LA076
- 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-46-350P
- 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
- N4946R
- Operator
- Richard Hewitt
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Treasure Cay Airport (MYAT), Treasure CayTo Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (KFXE), 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 · 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Manufacturer › Aircraft/equipment inadequate
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 he confirmed all landing gears were down and locked before landing. After a reported normal touchdown, the airplane started veering to the left. He applied right rudder input but the airplane traveled off the runway onto grass, and collided with a runway light. The nose landing gear collapsed and the airplane came to rest upright. Examination of the airplane following recovery revealed the right two (2) piece foot was fractured at the nose landing gear actuator attach location. NTSB examination of the right foot revealed evidence of fatigue, which covered a 90-degree arc and approximately 55 percent of the .07 inch wall thickness of the foot. Service Bulletin (SB) 1103B, which is not mandatory for the operator of the accident aircraft and had not been complied with, calls for repetitive inspections of the engine mount for cracks in the area where the fatigue crack was located.
Probable cause
The inadequate design of the engine mount by the manufacturer, resulting in collapse of the nose landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA07LA076
- Event ID
- 20070419X00439
- Case number
- MIA07LA076
- 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: 1c5bfed01b6dc5c7fa7fb9c48b4aa57b575f795d8d6bacd15282bc7eab9b3ff8; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:54:10.030Z.