CEN10LA210 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Three Rivers Municipal Dr Haines Airport (HAI) to Three Rivers Municipal Dr Haines Airport (HAI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA210
- 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-28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N3470R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Three Rivers Municipal Dr Haines Airport (HAI), Three Rivers, MITo Three Rivers Municipal Dr Haines Airport (HAI), Three Rivers, MI
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a touch-and-go landing, the airplane veered to the left and the flight instructor attempted to correct to the right thinking the student applied the left brake. However, the airplane continued to veer to the left and the right wing struck the terrain. The airplane continued off the runway and came to rest in a field. Examination of the airplane revealed that the left aft spar was bent and fractured, the left main landing gear separated, and the main landing landing gear torque link was fractured. An NTSB Materials Laboratory examination of the torque link revealed the fracture face contained crack arrest marks typical of fatigue cracking that emanated from multiple origins at the surface of the wall on both sides of the link. The fatigue origin areas contained no evidence of gouge damage or corrosion damage. The fatigue cracks were the result of lateral stress produced during landing and taxi operations. Hardness testing of the material produced values greater than the minimum hardness value.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain directional control during landing due to the failure of the left main landing gear torque link as a result of fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA210
- Event ID
- 20100420X62509
- Case number
- CEN10LA210
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-04-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2a6c8674f938e2c8963a246ff8cb46db00985710a238d385bca656fbbd89dedc; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:52:51.829Z.