WPR11LA074 · Piper PA-28-140
DuBois Aviation Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: landing gear collapse while taxiing
From Chino Airport (CNO) to Chino Airport (CNO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA074
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N5800U
- Operator
- Dubois Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chino Airport (CNO), Chino, CATo Chino Airport (CNO), Chino, CA
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- Landing gear collapse
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certified flight instructor and student pilot had just performed a soft-field landing. During the subsequent rollout, they noted that the airplane was not taxiing as expected. As the airplane exited the runway, it dropped onto its left wing and spun to the left. Examination of the left main landing gear revealed that the upper torque-link attachment lugs had detached from the landing gear strut, causing separation of the wheel assembly and subsequent substantial damage to the left wing. Further metallurgical examination of the strut revealed evidence of preexisting fatigue cracks to the upper torque-link attachment lugs. The airplane manufacturer issued a Service Bulletin about 8 years prior to the accident requiring inspection of the lugs in the area of failure. No evidence was found suggesting that the Service Bulletin had been complied with.
Probable cause
Fatigue cracking of the upper torque-link attach lugs on the left main landing gear strut, which resulted in separation of the left main landing gear during taxi.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA074
- Event ID
- 20101210X32327
- Case number
- WPR11LA074
- 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: 8ee07ca4d81de3ac99b57e789291ae0833f5c5022a92f4459d7e5fc4ed0df617; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:36:51.779Z.