ERA12LA287 · Piper PA-20
Jersey Devil Dusters Piper PA-20 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Flying W Airport (N14) to Cross Keys Airport (17N)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA287
- 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-20
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-20
- 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
- N7001K
- Operator
- Jersey Devil Dusters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flying W Airport (N14), Medford, NJTo Cross Keys Airport (17N), Cross Keys, NJ
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, minimal wind correction was required while on the final leg of the approach. Airport surveillance camera footage indicated that the airplane landed and veered several times left and right before departing the left side of the runway, where it came to rest. Rubber tire marks were evident on the runway near the airplane’s touch down point. Farther down the runway, a single rubber tire mark and wing paint transfer were observed, beginning left of the runway centerline and continuing onto the intersecting taxiway, near where the airplane came to rest. Postaccident examination revealed that the right main landing gear failed during the landing. Although internal corrosion of the landing gear was noted, a detailed examination of the failed landing gear revealed no corrosion associated with the overstress fracture surfaces. Although major repairs were performed on the landing gear assembly about 43 years before the accident, there was no indication that those repairs contributed to the accident. Based on physical and security camera evidence, it is likely that upon landing, the pilot placed a sideload on the landing gear, tried to realign with the runway centerline, but overcorrected and subsequently lost control.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during landing, which resulted in the overstress and subsequent failure of the right main landing gear assembly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA287
- Event ID
- 20120417X00541
- Case number
- ERA12LA287
- 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: 83e7e76937d75621c116403513e39b44dfdb098d57c900e3eec84d9dc0769b8e; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:47:10.517Z.