ANC08LA060 · Piper PA-34
Piper PA-34 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure during landing
From Houston Southwest Airport (KAXH) to Ocala International Airport - Jim Taylor Field (KOCF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC08LA060
- 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-34
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N11HR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Houston Southwest Airport (KAXH), Houston, TXTo Ocala International Airport - Jim Taylor Field (KOCF), Ocala, 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 · flare/touchdown
- Defining eventThe 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the private pilot, who was on a personal cross-country flight, he was about 6-10 feet above the landing runway when the left engine's propeller feathered. He said that the airplane dropped hard onto the runway, collapsing the nose landing gear and driving it through the top of the fuselage. The pilot reported that during the past several months the left propeller would feather uncommanded when taxiing from landing. He said that on the advice of his mechanic he had the propeller overhauled, and then replaced the engine--neither of which fixed the problem. The pilot, in consultation with his mechanic, determined that the propeller would probably not feather in flight. The pilot said that he planned to land with extra power during the accident flight, but found himself high and long on final approach, and when he reduced engine rpm to idle, about 6-10 feet above the runway, the left propeller feathered.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued operation of the airplane with a known mechanical deficiency--a propeller that would feather at low power. Contributing to the accident was the uncommanded feathering of the propeller.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC08LA060
- Event ID
- 20080624X00906
- Case number
- ANC08LA060
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: cd62aecd29f454bf12a83b9b471c5501919c1b6d38f3442cb74ad03f2b5f9aac; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:48:18.189Z.