Piedmont Airlines Flight 4551
DeHavilland DHC-8-311 · Incident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) on approach
From Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE) to Philadelphia International Airport (PHL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09IA056
- 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
- Airline
- 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
DeHavilland DHC-8-311
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-8
- 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
- N326EN
- Operator
- Piedmont Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE), Allentown, PATo Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), Philadelphia, PA
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was on approach for landing. When the landing gear was selected to the extended position, the main landing gear extended properly but the nose landing gear did not. The crew performed a go-around, exited the airport airspace, and unsuccessfully attempted to extend the nose landing gear using several checklists and in consult with ground-based maintenance personnel. A subsequent fly-by of the air traffic control tower confirmed that the nose landing gear doors were open, but that the nose landing gear was not extended. The captain subsequently landed the airplane with the nose landing gear retracted and delayed lowering the nose until the slowest speed possible. The nose of the airplane contacted the runway and the airplane slid for about 525 feet before it stopped. There was no fire, and the passengers deplaned normally at the scene. On-site examination of the airplane and a laboratory examination of the nosegear components revealed that the steering links had been circumferentially loaded in tension beyond their load-carrying capacity. Failure of the steering links allowed the nosewheels to rotate in the wheel well and become wedged within the structure. Hardness testing satisfied the manufacturer's minimum requirements and no determination could be made as to when the overload occurred.
Probable cause
The mechanical overload of the nosewheel steering links for undetermined reasons, which resulted in nose landing gear rotation and its subsequent wedging within the wheel well structure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09IA056
- Event ID
- 20081116X33137
- Case number
- ERA09IA056
- 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. 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: 40e46a414c8292bfe456103ccb9de4ef0b847656780eb820511c99a7b031be46; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:33:11.299Z.