ERA11LA386 · Piper PA-32R-301
Piper PA-32R-301 · Accident: hard landing
From Melbourne Orlando International Airport (MLB) to Bowman Field (LOU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11LA386
- 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-32R-301
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N8319N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Melbourne Orlando International Airport (MLB), Melbourne, FLTo Bowman Field (LOU), Louisville, KY
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 performed a steep descent while on approach, and the airplane touched down on the runway and bounced. The left landing gear collapsed, and the airplane veered off the left side of the runway, where it struck a taxiway sign and sustained substantial damage to its fuselage and both wings. When interviewed after the accident, the pilot did not report experiencing any mechanical malfunctions. However, he subsequently reported that the engine did not respond to a throttle control input after the airplane bounced and that he was not certain whether he experienced any mechanical malfunctions. Examination of the engine did not reveal any preimpact malfunctions. The airplane had been operated for about 20 hours since its most recent annual inspection, which was performed about 4 months prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare and inadequate recovery from a bounced landing, which resulted in a landing gear collapse.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11LA386
- Event ID
- 20110707X01459
- Case number
- ERA11LA386
- 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: a5285f2273d3979cecdf50ceb3dc0bad61d9b923028d686ac6012edb8efa36fa; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:25:00.937Z.